GARDENA >> A couple of months ago, he couldn’t put on a helmet.
“It was awkward,” he said. “The shoulder pads felt like nothing, they were fine. But I told the coaches, ‘Why can’t we just do without the helmet?’ They told me we couldn’t do that.”
Now Olowole Betiku lines up at defensive end for Serra. And everyone in the Mission League buckles the chinstrap extra tight.
Betiku came from Nigeria, via suburban Washington, D.C., to give the Cavaliers exactly what they needed as they moved up in class. He has become such a quarterback-chasing force that USC, UCLA, Michigan, Iowa, Miami and Penn State are recruiting him, as a junior.
On Friday night the Cavaliers play at Alemany, one of the “event” games in Southern California this fall. Serra has beaten Notre Dame and Crespi and lost to Bishop Amat. It also lost to a powerful Bellevue (Wash.) team to open the season.
The theory is that this rutted road will better prepare Serra for the playoffs. It also has led to injuries.
“Be careful what you wish for,” coach Scott Altenberg said.
You don’t dare wish for a guy like Betiku to drop into your world. It just happened, thanks to the NFL Network.
LaVar Arrington, the former Penn State All-American and All-Pro linebacker for Washington, visited Nigeria on behalf of his foundation and found Betiku. He saw the way Betiku ran through drills, and sent back a video to a friend, who said, ‘He’s just like you were.”
Arrington became Betiku’s guardian and brought him to his home in Upper Marlboro, Md, and Betiku attended Bishop McNamara High. He did not play football during that sophomore year.
Then the NFL Network hired Arrington. It is based in Culver City, freeway-close to the three-time state champions.
“We saw him in the summer,” said Joshua Dobbs, the defensive coordinator and athletic director. “There were a lot of things he didn’t know, but he works hard and he’s such an impressive athlete.
“We put him in that position because it was pretty simple. Go get the quarterback. But you see a lot of guys who look like that and they can’t play. They look like Tarzan and play like Jane. Wole looks like Tarzan and plays like Tarzan.”
Betiku is 6-foot-4 and 240. In his fifth high school gane he had two-and-a-half sacks against Notre Dame. That was also the game in which he joined the pre-game inspirational ritual.
“I was yelling, for the first time,” he said. “My teammates hadn’t heard me do that before. Now they want me to do it every game. They say, ‘Give us that African scream.’”
Betiku’s father is an auto technician in Lagos, Nigeria’s capital, and his mother is a bursar at a school. They had no problem with their son going overseas, playing a strange game with all that armor. They get the games on the internet now and they call him before each one, telling them they pray he won’t get hurt. Too late -- he broke something in his wrist against Notre Dame. He wraps it in a cast and plays anyway.
“It’s a scary game,” Betiku said. “When I came out I had a rough time. I had to learn how to line up in the right spot so the coaches wouldn’t keep yelling at me. Bu I kept coming back. I figured that if all these Americans could do this, well, I came all the way from Nigeria to do this. I have to work harder than they do. I can’t call my Mom and say I can’t do it. I want to keep doing this so I don’t have to go back to Nigeria.”
Arrington will make sure that doesn’t happen. He goes to Serra games and does his share of voluntary coaching. He lives in West Hollywood, so Betiku has to leave for school at 6 a.m. and does not get back home until 8 p.m.
The long trip leaves room for reflection. Betiku keeps waking up and nothing has changed. So it must be real.
“I still feel like it’s a movie, every day,” he said. “I feel like I’ve lived with LaVar all my life, like I’m really his son, even though there’s no blood going.
“I’ll be out there and say, ‘I can’t do it,’ and he’ll say, ‘Just do it. I know it works.’ I need that in my life. I would think about a high school setting like this and say I wish I had this opportunity.”
And all he has to do, to get to the end of the movie, is squeeze on that helmet. Like everything else, it’s beginning to fit.