DAYTONA BEACH — Usually, the trophy rests in a display case at the front of the Mainland High School gym. It’s been there for years.
But two weeks ago, assistant coach Lester Davis dusted it off and placed it on a gray cart, wheeling it out to the sideline of the Buccaneers’ afternoon football practice as they prepared for a state semifinal against Dunbar.
“We didn’t talk about it,” head coach Travis Roland said. “It was just a presence.”
The Bucs defeated Dunbar to advance to the 3S state championship contest, where they’ll battle Lake Wales on Friday. They’ll look to join the 2003 Mainland Bucs — the team that produced that trophy — as the only state football champs in Volusia County history.
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Each day, the coaching staff drags the hardware out to the field as a sign of what could be. Mainland’s current senior class wasn't yet born when the 2003 Bucs knocked off Naples to claim it. Roland was a senior captain.
But in the 19 years since, the spirit of the team remains alive, and the memories are still clear.
Here’s how the Bucs won it:
The offseason
The Bucs hated the way the 2002 season ended.
They lost only one game during the regular season and cracked the top 10 in the USA Today national rankings. But after charging to the semifinals, they fell 30-3 to Wharton.
“We thought we were going to win it that year,” running back Vince Wilson said. “That might’ve been a more talented team than the state championship team.”
Typically, the players received a few weeks off following the season, but after the Wharton loss, they got right back in the weight room the next Monday. All offseason, they ran coach-less practices.
The regular season
It was like a holiday arrived early.
Instead of wrapping up their schedule against Seabreeze like they traditionally did, the Bucs began 2003 against their main rival. The Sandcrabs were responsible for Mainland's lone regular-season loss in 2002.
“I remember being quoted for saying this,” offensive lineman Pierre Canidate said. “I said, ‘Man, the way I feel, no one is complaining. It just feels like Christmas is coming early this year.’ They kicked our butts the year before, so we had a vendetta against them.”
Mainland played like it had a grudge, marching to a 50-20 victory.
On defense, they shut down star Seabreeze quarterback Xavier Lee, holding him to 130 passing yards. On offense, Wilson and Avery Atkins combined for 308 yards and four touchdowns on the ground.
Late in the fourth quarter, after the Bucs had scored their final touchdown to make it 48-20, they lined up for an extra point. Kelin Johnson, appearing in his first game with the team, was the holder.
He caught the snap and instead of putting it down for the kick, took off around the edge for a two-point conversion.
“That was kind of his acceptance into Mainland Buccaneer football,” Canidate said. “I know (coach John Maronto) was pissed, but Kelin was good in our book.”
The victory sent Mainland on a tear.
It outscored its next three opponents 129-0 before beating Edgewater and New Smyrna Beach by one score each. The Bucs bludgeoned Pine Ridge and Flagler Palm Coast the next two weeks to head into the regular-season finale against Hollywood Chaminade undefeated.
Mainland got on the board first with a first-quarter field goal by Donald Bentley, but didn’t score again until the fourth.
The Bucs coughed up three fumbles, an interception and had two kicks blocked as Chaminade rattled off 31 unanswered points, coasting to a 31-9 victory.
“We weren't ourselves,” Wilson said. “We were doing things out of the ordinary. We weren’t disciplined. I kind of think we overlooked them because they’re a smaller school.”
“It was just like, ‘Whoa, it takes one game for us to come out here and not play well, and we’ll get beat,’” Roland said. “We lined up wrong on defense all night … But it was much better to lose that one than any of the playoff games.”
The Chaminade loss happened on a Thursday. Canidate’s mom allowed him to sleep in and miss his first few Friday classes. He walked onto campus with teammate Steven Fulbright, who also skipped morning periods, and sensed that everyone was down.
During warmups at the following Monday’s practice, the team was quiet.
“I just remember standing out and going, ‘Hey guys, that game is over. We’re not going to play Chaminade again. Let’s focus on Bartram Trail. Let’s go. Let’s lock in,’” Canidate said. “It was like a switch, and everybody forgot about that one.”
The postseason
The Bucs were missing a few players for the first half of the first playoff game. After four unsportsmanlike conduct/personal foul penalties in the second half against Chaminade, Maronto benched five defensive starters for the first two quarters against Bartram Trail.
The Bears raced to a 14-6 lead in the first quarter. Mainland responded with touchdowns on offense, defense and special teams in the second quarter to take a 25-20 advantage into intermission.
The starters who sat out returned and immediately made an impact. Bartram Trail was held scoreless in the second half. Its quarterback was sacked 10 times. Wilson found the end zone twice in the fourth to ice the game, 39-20.
In the second round, the Bucs traveled to Niceville and entered a packed and hostile environment.
“When you get into their stadium, you come down their home side when you’re coming out of the locker room,” Roland said. “It’s a little bit intimidating.”
The Bucs pulled away in the fourth quarter again with two touchdowns in a 21-3 win.
Mainland returned to Daytona Stadium for a third-round matchup with Fletcher. The Senators picked up a second-quarter touchdown and kept the Bucs without points in the first half.
“It was a chippy game,” Roland said. “Lots of trash talk pregame. They brought the Duval swag to Daytona, and they probably thought they were going to scare us, which was never going to happen.”
The Bucs jumpstarted their offense in the third quarter with a trick play. Quarterback Jonathan Garner took the snap and tossed to receiver Abner Brown behind the line of scrimmage. Brown then lofted a deep ball to Travis Parks for a 64-yard, game-tying score.
While Mainland's defense held Fletcher to 36 yards on its last 20 plays, Wilson scampered for two touchdowns in the final eight minutes, giving the Bucs a 21-7 lead they never lost. For the second consecutive year, they'd made the semifinals.
The morning of the semifinal game, Canidate woke up for school and got ready. He looked in the mirror and smiled.
“My prayer at the beginning of that season was, ‘God, if you can get us back to that semifinal, we’re going to win this thing, without a doubt,’” he said.
Squaring off with Durant, the Bucs snatched an early 6-0 lead before falling behind 7-6 at halftime. Mainland regained the lead late in the third quarter on a 27-yard field goal by Bentley.
In the fourth, Durant pushed into the end zone again, but Wilson and Atkins both rumbled for touchdowns to clinch a 23-14 victory and the state-title trip.
The championship game
“You felt the energy building up every day,” assistant coach Terry Anthony said.
The Bucs had one week to prepare for Naples. Focusing on academics was tough, sleeping was even tougher.
Garner had a VCR in his bedroom. Each night, he’d pop in the scouting tape and review it before dozing off in the morning hours.
Naples carried a 13-1 record into the title game and had knocked off some of the top teams in Florida. It deployed an explosive option offense and supported it with a defense that allowed a total of 17 points in its previous seven contests.
“They were so co*cky,” Maronto said. “And that’s good to be co*cky. But we had a little bit of a chip on our shoulder. We were creating not just a new season, but we called it ‘the whole season.’ This is what we had been waiting for.”
The Bucs were confident, too.
During his senior year, Canidate lugged a camcorder around with him and often shot video of the team at school, in the locker room or just hanging out. The Monday before the championship, he asked Wilson about the game and filmed his response.
Wilson guaranteed a victory.
Later that day, Canidate talked to Roland on camera. With no knowledge of Wilson’s promise, Roland said the same thing.
“When it came down to state, we weren’t going to be denied,” Canidate said. “We worked too hard and all had each other’s backs.”
The title game kicked off at the University of Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Dec. 12, and the opening period couldn’t have gone much better for Mainland.
Bentley nabbed the first points of the game on a 41-yard field goal midway through the first quarter. On the ensuing Naples possession, Mainland forced a fumble that Matt Lewis recovered. Bentley drilled another field goal to up the Bucs’ lead to 6-0.
With two minutes left in the first, the Golden Eagles botched a punt attempt, which gave Mainland the ball at the Naples 6. Three plays later, Garner plowed in to make it 14-0.
But the Golden Eagles scored 13 straight points over the second and third quarters on a touchdown run and two field goals before Bentley gifted Mainland a bit of breathing room (17-13) with his third field goal.
In the fourth, Garner and Parks added to it.
Garner saw Parks hitting his helmet before a snap, meaning he was going to read and react to the defensive back. Parks was supposed to run a bunch route. He lined up on the outside next to Brown, who was in the slot. The defense was in Cover 2.
When Garner called for the snap and with the cornerback staying shallow, Parks shifted to a go route. The safety bit on Brown, who ran a curl. Garner launched a pass 25 yards to the end zone, and Parks hauled it in.
“I was wide open,” Parks said.
“It was such a heads-up play on his end,” Garner said.
Like it had done all season, Mainland’s defense became a cement wall. With the Bucs ahead 24-13, they stuffed four straight plays from inside the 5-yard line. The Golden Eagles managed only two plays of more than 2 yards in the final 22 minutes.
Mainland drained the clock. With less than two minutes remaining, it faced third-down-and-a-few yards. Wilson took the ball and busted through for a first down.
“If you watch that last play of Vince getting the first down, you’ll see all of our O-linemen just demolishing people and Vince running like a maniac,” Garner said.
Anthony, the offensive coordinator, was upstairs in the coaches’ box. He made his way down during the final drive, and his headset lost reception in the elevator. He couldn’t hear what the other coaches were saying.
When the elevator reached the ground and the doors parted, he asked assistant coach Don Garner, Jonathan’s father, what was going on.
Don Garner yelled back, “We’re in victory (formation), baby!”
Anthony sprinted toward the field.
Jonathan Garner dropped to a knee to finish the championship season.
“It was just so surreal,” Wilson said. “Everybody was sprinting and jumping around. I’ll never forget the band going crazy. It was everything.”
It was also Maronto’s 200th career victory as a head coach.
“We were more physical,” he said. “We were smarter. And we did everything right — not perfect, but we did the little things.”
The team drove two hours back and pulled onto campus after 1 a.m. The parking lot was full.
Many of the fans beat the team bus back and convened for an impromptu reception. They held signs and celebrated.
“It looked like we were having school but way more people were at school,” Wilson said. “I’ve never, ever seen Mainland High School look like that.”
A month later, the city of Daytona Beach held a parade. Players and coaches sat on half a dozen floats and cruised from the school to Jackie Robinson Ballpark. They were presented the keys to the city by the mayor.
“We felt like celebrities,” Canidate said. “To be the first in Volusia County to win a football state championship, there were so many great athletes and so many dominant teams that came before us. For whatever reason, we put together a disciplined bunch that gelled and had its own chemistry. We had just as much talent as the rest of them, but we felt like we deserved this.”
So did the community.
“We went to the mall, and that’s when the food court was full of all types of restaurants,” Roland said. “Chick-fil-A was there. I walked in there a few times before the championship and after, and people were like, ‘You’re not paying. I got it.’ Wherever you went, people wanted to take care of the Mainland football players.”
The aftermath
Pierre Canidate is 36 and lives in Atlanta. He has two kids. He’s worked for the Pentagon, Department of Defense and Department of Veteran Affairs, yet he still lists getting the key to the city on his resume.
He keeps in touch with former teammates, chatting frequently with Wilson and Roland. Garner and Johnson reside near him in Georgia. There's still a bond between them all, wherever they have gone since. Their mantra for the 2003 season was “commitment to brotherhood.”
“Like, I haven’t seen Abner in a couple years,” said Canidate, who will be at the game Friday. “But when I see Abner, it’ll feel like we just talked yesterday. It’s one of those things.”
Canidate no longer owns the camcorder he used to record those championship moments, but he has the master copies of the film. In 2012, he turned the footage into a documentary called “All of the Lights.”
Every once in a while, he falls asleep and dreams about Mainland football. That he’s 17 again. That he’s standing next to Atkins, who died in 2007, and they’re laughing about something. That he’s suiting up with Roland.
“It doesn’t feel out of place,” he said.
