Santana Sterling

Affiliation: former Hamilton High School linebacker, class of 2014.

Interview date: Sept. 14, 2016.

FA: I’m with former Hamilton High School standout linebacker Santana Sterling, who helped lead the Huskies to a title in 2012 and also was a part of that first team to ever lose to Chandler in 2013.

What were your first introductions to the rivalry like?

SS: It was about eighth grade, and I was originally supposed to go to Basha but one of my friends brought me to the Hamilton-Chandler game. It was one of those years where Chandler was supposed to win, but Kyren Poe caught that touchdown over Malcom [Holland]. That was just the first experience I had where I saw what kind of rivalry it really was. It was the first time I was introduced into the rivalry.

FA: What was it about Hamilton that really drew you into that program?

SS: It was just the competitive nature. I’ve always played with the best kids in the best leagues, and I didn’t want that to change once I got to high school. I felt like I was a player that could compete at that level, and I just liked everything that I had going there. It was a perfect fit, I felt like.

FA: What was Hamilton reputation like when you were growing up and while you were a part of the program?

SS: Hamilton’s reputation is they were just the best team in the state. I moved here from out of state in Michigan in the sixth grade, and when we first moved here my older brother was in high school. I remember going with him to check [Hamilton] out, and I remember everyone talking about how Hamilton was the best. They had the best players, and they were just starting this campaign to take over Arizona.

FA: What do you make of what Steve Belles has been able to build at Hamilton?

SS: He’s done a great job of building the program up. He’s got a few great coaches, who not a lot of them started with him but have stayed. He’s just built off what [John] Wrenn had, and just kept it going.

FA: What’s the culture like when you first become a part of that program?

SS: When you first come in, you’re pretty drawn back. You’ve got players walking around, like when I was a freshman I played and was around Christian Westerman, Tyler Johnstone, pretty intimidating players and everything. But then it’s like a brotherhood, because everyone knows what it takes to get there. Everyone knows that the younger dudes are eventually going to be up there one day, so everyone kind of looks out for each other. Once you’re in the program, it’s a great, cool way to meet a bunch of guys and I’ve developed life-long friends from it. It was a great program. It felt like a family, almost.

FA: Hamilton is known for its particular style. What do you think it is that makes Hamilton stand out among the other programs in the state?

SS: I just think that it was the foundation that was set from the guys above us. Nobody wanted to let down what has been created before us. Nobody wanted to be that class that –unfortunately it was us — but nobody wanted to be that class that lost to Chandler. Nobody wanted to be that class that didn’t make it to the state championship. It was all based on [the belief], ‘We’re Hamilton. We’re great, we’re going to outwork everybody and win a state championship every year.’ That was the main goal.

FA: You mentioned that you originally were going to go to Basha. How important do you think it’s been for Hamilton and for Chandler and other schools to have open enrollment?

SS: I think it’s very important. I feel like there’s so many kids that, even just on the Hamilton team, I knew were supposed to go to Perry, supposed to go to Basha. I knew kids that drove an hour and a half from Florence, kids that drove from past Glendale just to come to the program. It really speaks for itself. Kids are really trying to get there from all over the state of Arizona, just to get to the program. I think open enrollment played a huge role, not just with Hamilton but with every school. It’s a great opportunity to let kids go out of the boundary and not be restricted to a certain school based off where they live and the distance from where they live [to the school].

FA: It does seem like the Chandler schools are the ones who get most of those open enrollment kids. What makes the region so attractive?

SS: First, mainly it’s the sports. The sports in Chandler have always been big, no matter where it is between Chandler, Basha, Hamilton. There’s always good teams. But there’s also the academic aspect of it, too. There’s a lot of kids’ parents who wanted them to go to a good athletic program and get scholarships through that, but also have that academic program. [Chandler Unified School District] I think is like an A-plus rating for education, so that was also another big aspect to bring people in.

FA: Hamilton has had a bunch of recognition around the state obviously. Where do you think it has sat in terms of national recognition?

SS: Hamilton definitely made their mark, not just on the high school platform here in Arizona. It’s just known as the best program in the state, and then once they built that foundation up they started playing out of state schools. Teams like Booker T. [Washington], Bishop Gorman, we’d start beating them and that’s when the tide really switched and we became a powerhouse and were ranked nationally. I think all four years I was there, we ranked in the top 25 nationally except maybe our senior year.

FA: When you have this attention and do things like that trip to Ireland, do you think that puts a target on your back?

SS: I mean, at Hamilton you always have a target on your back. It’s a team everyone marks on their calendar who they want to play, who they want to beat and knock off. The national attention, in regards to putting a bigger target on our back, it just in a way added more fuel to the fire. People just doubted us and [questioned] why we were going to Ireland. [They’d think] ‘They think they’re the best team in the country’ or whatever they’d say, it’d just light the fuel to your fire. It just makes you practice that much harder, play that much harder when you know every team you play is going to give it their all, so you have to come out each week and give it your all, too.

FA: That year you went to Ireland, you also lost to Mountain Pointe to start out 0–2. How important was that, to be able to turn back and eventually win that state championship that season?

SS: That was everything, because I mean the year before we had that 53-game win streak coming into state and the team we’d handled really well in the regular season came out and gave it to us in state. I just remember having that feeling as a sophomore like, ‘Wow, I never want to lose a game again. This is horrible’ That junior year, we came out and lost our first game to Mountain Pointe and our first game in Ireland to Notre Dame-Sherman Oaks and I feel like that really just drove us. It pushed us, made everybody work harder in practices. Lifting became more intense, meetings became more intense, because we knew we couldn’t lose again. We kind of put our backs to the wall where we weren’t going to go down without a fight. We weren’t going to back down, so it kind of drove us in a way to succeed and work our hardest every day.

FA: Do you feel like it was almost needed, where there’s a certain amount of point where you have so much success and lose focus?

SS: I think I definitely see that, because, not to take a jab at our coaches and everything but it was almost to where we were almost getting complacent, letting the players do more of what they want because we were Hamilton. We could do what we wanted. We inflicted whatever we wanted to inflict on our opponents every Friday night, so there was nothing really our coaches could tell us. But after those two losses, it was a completely different story. Our coaches took over again and told us how it was going to be from then on, and if you didn’t like it then they could get out the way. But they were going to do it this way, because it’s the way they’ve done it. That’s just the change that we needed.

FA: Playing in those Chandler-Hamilton games, how much attention were you paying to the streak? Did it come up at all?

SS: Every year, everyone knows about the streak and how we had it going. We have a big pep rally the day of the game and everyone is just hyped, but when it finally happened, especially to our class and especially how it did happen, it kind of hit me. Even to this day, it still hurts me that we’re the class that it had to happen to.

FA: The night they beat you, Chandler took the lead with about two minutes to go and you guys came back and scored on a tipped ball to Elijah Williams. Did that feel almost like it was similar to a Kyren Poe situation, where the bounces again fell Hamilton’s way?

SS: That’s exactly what it felt like. It felt like, every year, even if Chandler — because Chandler did have a better team than Hamilton a number of times — I don’t know, things just clicked Hamilton’s way. It was a mindset where we can’t lose this game. We’re not going to lose this game, and things are going to happen to go our way. Even under the weirdest circumstances. Soon we threw that pass, we thought, ‘Oh, no,’ but it fell right into Elijah’s arms and he took it to the crib. That just made us remember we were Hamilton, and we had this. Then obviously, that’s not what happened. But it definitely did feel like that.

FA: How that loss happened, what was the reaction like immediately after and how jarring was it to see the streak come to an end?

SS: It sucked, being honest. Every year at the Chandler-Hamilton game, all the alumni and past players come back. Everyone in the state was really watching that game, and for it to be on us, especially on our defense, being the team captain and being the linebacker on defense it was just horrible. I remember that I just went over to the track and just sat down and started crying. A couple of players I had played with when I was a sophomore came up to me and kept telling me that everything was going to be OK. Joey Vincent was like, ‘You have nothing to hang your head about. These other dudes need to figure out what’s going on here. We need to figure out the tradition and everything.’ It was just a disappointment. We let everybody down. It was just weird at school. On Monday, it was quiet. The coaches weren’t even talking. It was definitely one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had in a football experience in my life.

FA: You faced them again in the semis that year, but it was under odd circumstances after the game got moved to a Monday. How difficult was it to stay sharp during that time?

SS: It was pretty crazy because it was raining for like two days straight, but we still had our assembly and everything. It came to be about one to two o’clock and the AIA called the game off. We would always have a walkthrough at the end of the day, and our coaches called us in and told us that the game would be moved to a Monday. It was just a crazy feeling because you’re hyped up for it all week, you finally match up against the team you wanted to match up with in the state semifinals. One winner goes to the state championship, and the other just has to stay and watch. The emotions were definitely high, people were intense, and it was weird just waiting those two days and waiting the whole weekend. We had to wait Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then go to school Monday having a weird feeling of having to play that game on a Monday night. But it was also a great feeling being able to win and having Tyrell [Smith] punch it in at the end and punch our ticket to the state championship. Especially after it was a team we had lost to in the regular season that we had never lost to before. We were definitely not about to have them beat us again and give them a free ride to state.

FA: How difficult were the conditions that night? I remember a lot of people slipping around, and it was really defense-oriented as a result once again.

SS: It was a tough game. It was a football game, a real football game. I don’t think there was any grass left on the field after the game. I remember there was just this giant mud pit. It was about more than just who won. It was about who was going to come out and face adversity and figure out a fix and just get through it. I definitely remember slipping all over the field trying to make a cut. You’d break back under a pulling guard and just completely slip a few times just being caught up in the mud. I do have a picture after the game with my brother [Levi], and I’m just covered in mud with my jersey. It’s one of my favorite pictures, because it shows how resilient we were and how we weren’t going to give up no matter what the circumstances are conditions.

FA: They took the lead again with about a minute to go in that game. Did any doubt creep in to your guys’ heads at all considering how the last game had ended?

SS: It definitely felt like there was an eerie feeling after he crossed [the goal line], but just being on defense you have to have that faith in your offense, faith in [Sam Sasso]. Before they went out, I grabbed Sammy, Casey Tucker and Tyrell [Smith] and told the guys, ‘Whatever you do, just give it your all. This might be our last high school game, so just handle yours.’ They went out there and they did that exactly, and they punched it in to give us the win.

FA: That game obviously can’t compare with the feeling of winning a state championship, but what did that win mean to you?

SS: That was up there with some of the big games that I’ve played in throughout my career. It really was, just the emotions were high and the fans were there and everyone was going crazy. Everybody knew that they had beaten us before, so they were going to try to do it again. I kind of compare it almost to Desert Ridge as a sophomore, where they came into our house with an undefeated record and they claimed that they were going to smack the piss out of us. They had the sidelines full, the stands were full and everything. We went out there and shut them out on defense, and the only reason they scored was a pick-six. I just kind of felt the same emotions as there, because a team came in and thought they were just going to smack us off and get an easy win. We just were resilient, put up a fight and hit them in the mouth. They didn’t want it.

FA: Where do you think the rivalry is at right now, and how does it compare to others in the state?

SS: Right now, times have definitely changed a little bit. Hamilton-Chandler is always going to be a big rivalry, but just with them getting that first win and then the seasons after we graduated some unfortunate circumstances happened for them too at Hamilton. I don’t know what the feeling is like in the community down there, but just from an outsider’s standpoint it’s just changed up a little bit. It’s still up there though with the top rivalries in the state, the battle for the Boulevards and the battle for the Avenues. It’s still going to be an all-timer, but it’s changed a bit since they got a few wins over us. It was just more intensified when every year people thought Chandler was going to end the streak.

FA: What were the atmospheres like for those games?

SS: I mean, the intensity of going out there, there’s nothing that compares to it. I remember my sophomore year I went out there and was the third-string punter and the whole student section was there with their horns, just yelling at us, talking crap. I just thought wow, this was really live out here. This is grown-man football. As the years went on, it just got more intensified. It was just the best game to play in. You’d look forward to that on the calendar every year, too, because it was a chance for you to go out there and just ball out in front of the whole state of Arizona. You know everyone’s going to be out for that game, too. It’s just a great feeling. The intensity is fun, the bands are always loud, sidelines are always packed, crowds always going crazy, student sections going at it. It’s just a great — I don’t think there’s a better high school game that I’ve ever played in than the Chandler-Hamilton rivalry. It’s just the best game ever.