Sports

Friday, Aug. 29, 2008

Cal Poly football: Longtime teammates ready for another title shot

After missing out on a championship run at Righetti, longtime teammates ready for their senior season

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In high school, Ryan Mole was Santa Maria’s version of Booby Miles.

The details of the Righetti High running back’s devastating shoulder injury was the flukish equivalent to the tale of Miles’ season-ending knee injury in the pages of the best-selling book Friday Night Lights.

His team was up big. He was probably only moments from being taken out of the game. One final handoff derailed a promising senior season.

When Mole leapt over that fateful pile against Lompoc in 2003, his unceremonious landing not only snapped his collarbone, it separated the running back from the Warriors’ other arm in the offense’s 1-2 punch, junior quarterback Jonathan Dally.

Dally, who’d moved between towns just about every year as a kid but had finally found a home in Santa Maria, carried the team with his running and passing ability.

But Righetti just wasn’t the same.

Like Miles, Mole came back before he was 100 percent, and like Odessa-Permian (Texas), Righetti did not win a league title or advance to the championship round of the playoffs.

“He would have broken every high school record at Righetti by any means,” former Warriors coach Greg Dickinson said of Mole, who rushed for 1,136 yards and 11 touchdowns in just four games that season. “And he was such a weapon because he had the ability to catch the football, not just run it.

“We would have probably won the league championship. Instead, we tied for second, and we ran into St. Bonaventure in another CIF year they won it.”

After three years of going their separate ways, Dally and Mole have since reunited on the Cal Poly football team. Nagging injuries hindered Mole, who rushed for 424 yards and three touchdowns, while Dally broke out to become the

No. 2-rated passer in the Football Championship Subdivision in their first season with the Mustangs in 2007.

This season, which begins Saturday with a road game at San Diego State, the duo will have one last chance to help bring a championship to the Central Coast. “I was extremely eager to play

with him again,” Dally said. “I knew like everybody else what he was capable of and felt kind of like my junior year (at Righetti) had been asterisked. If we’d had Mole…. I’ve always looked up to Ryan, and Ryan has always been a good role model for me.”

Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, Dally said he shuffled between Seattle, Sacramento and Las Vegas with his older brother and sister as custody over the kids switched back and forth between divorced parents.

He settled down in Santa Maria for high school and as a freshman was promoted to join senior brother Joseph on the varsity team for the playoffs.

Dickinson said despite Dally’s diminutive size — he was only about 5-foot-7 and 135 pounds — coaches could already tell Dally would become the program’s fu-

ture leader, an idea that belied his temperament at the time.

The constant adjustment to new friends and classmates while moving around gave Dally a personality he described as quiet and reserved.

But the 6-foot, 190-pound quarterback didn’t know reserved until he became good friends with Mole, a small-town guy from Orcutt.

Mole, a 5-10, 190-pound running back, was so quiet, it took Dally a couple of seasons before he even narrowed down the candidates enough to figure out who the kid coaches called “Ryan Mole” even was.

After graduation, Mole went to play at Sacramento State. Uncomfortable in the big city and unhappy with the football program in general, Mole withdrew. He began letting his body art speak for him.

What started as a high school pact with his teammates to each get a tattoo senior year became a passion in Sacramento.

Adding to the “Moley” on his tricep, Mole got Asian symbols for “family” and “strength” under his arms.

His outlet became more outward. Tribal designs trickle up and down his right arm and shoulder, and a thinner band rings his left.

After rushing for 1,626 yards and seven touchdowns in two seasons for the Hornets and over his Sacramento experience, Mole transferred to Allan Hancock College to nurse an injury and get his associate degree.

“The tattoos were a sign of maturity on his part,” Dally said. “I’ve seen he’s got this body art that symbolizes a lot of these things, a lot of his energy comes from within.”

The two met up again, and Dally had changed as well.

In two seasons at Hancock, Dally passed for 2,229 yards and 24 touchdowns. He became an All-Western State Conference quarterback and earned the team’s most valuable player award his sophomore season after leading Hancock to back-to-back 7-3 regular-season records.

And as Mole would find out when the two moved in together after coming to Cal Poly, Dally wasn’t so reserved anymore.

“I’m a weird person,” Dally said. “I’m just really outgoing. I talk really loud. I kind of just say what’s on my mind. Not to be a jerk, everybody understands where I’m coming from.”

The contrast has turned out to be the perfect complement.

Dally can feign shame at his paltry “Dally” tattoo, which didn’t turn out nearly as cool as “Moley.”

And as Dally goes on his class-clownish monologues, Mole can sit back and chuckle.

There’s no clash, and the duo heads into the season closer than ever before.

It only adds to the synergy of a prolific Cal Poly offense that returns 10 of 11 starters from a team that averaged nearly 40 points per game last season and enters 2008 ranked 14th in the nation and favored by coaches to win a Great West Football Conference title.

The Mustangs offensive backfield, which also includes senior running back James Noble, junior fullback Jon Hall and backup wingback Jono Grayson, was tabbed as the best in the FCS going into the season by the Sports Network.

Mole and Dally, who rushed for a team-best 763 yards and 12 touchdowns last season, were a definite part of that assessment.

But with All-American wide receiver and unanimous choice for Great West preseason player of the year Ramses Barden as well as No. 2 receiver Tre’dale Tolver back as well, Dally said he’s looking to get the ball out of his hands more this season.

“Last year I ran the ball scared, not ready to take a hit and not willing to take the yards and fall down,” Dally said. “I was ready to take the beating, and it didn’t really work out because I’m not the biggest person on the team. I’d rather give it to Ramses, James, Tre’dale or Ryan, so that they can take the hit instead of me.”