Slick like a snake

By Michael Ashcraft –

Antonio Pellot is trouble on the football team – for opponents. Sometimes for his own team.

He identified a personal rival on the Frazier Mountain High School, the biggest player #88, 230 pound, 6’1” hulk who runs while dragging players, Hunter Hobbs, who wrecked havoc on Lighthouse Christian Academy.

Tony hunted Hunter.

Trailing but within striking distance to win with just minutes left in the game, Lighthouse scored a touchdown. Tony decided it was worth it to punish Hunter. The refs called a personal foul, making the conversion attempt from 15 yards instead of the usual 5. The Saints stilled scored.

“He was unsportsmanlike, so I had to show him what was up. I’m quite a target,” Tony said afterward. “They had a girl on the team. It kind of discouraged me. So I kind of body-slammed her. I guess that pissed them off. Also my hits. I was hitting harder than them. They were getting salty. I’m silent and deadly.”

Trash talk..

Lighthouse lost its last game of the season 30-34.

Alex Brick, LCA’s 230 lb lineman who stuffed runs from Hunter up the middle, got injured in the fourth quarter. That’s how Frazier won, they broke down the Brick Wall.

Immediately after Alex’s injury, the Falcons ran up the middle – to a touchdown. LCA responded with a rocket to the fleet feet and sticky fingers of Zion Jenkins, which followed by the 15-yard conversion, making the score 30-34.

LCA attempted an onside kick, which if they would have recovered, they could have scored and won.

Falcons got the onside kick. With 1:30 left on the clock, the game was basically over.

Still, Hunter Hobbs ran up the middle for another touchdown, just to humiliate LCA. Every Saint grabbed him, but he shook them all off, like the Hulk, without losing his footing and continued to power forward.

That’s when Tony caught him and submitted him to some kind of street grapple.

The Hunter became the prey.

That’s Tony, the troublemaker, making trouble for opponents.

Before Tony came to Lighthouse last year, he was a troublemaker in the public school system.

Lighthouse showed him love, hope and Jesus.

“I was struggling with drug addiction,” he says.. “I was very depressed and angry to a point where I felt I had no soul. I just was a very negative person before I came to Lighthouse..

“After going to the church service, they started talking to me, and I started opening my heart to the Lord.,” he adds. “He began to open my eyes to all the good things in my life. It made me more happy. I felt like I was free.

“I should be in juve but I never got caught because I was slick like snake,” he says.

The troubles of his past poured out on the field. He turned his angst into good football.

The funny thing? To play football, he would make himself angry, and he felt like that distanced him from God. “I sacrificed my relationship with God for football.”

Although he hasn’t yet learned how to transition between football emotions and life zen, Tony says he’s derived blessings from being a part of a team.

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About this reporter: Mike Ashcraft teaches journalism at the Lighthouse Christian Academy of Santa Monica.