West coast duo kicks off football road tour with a taste of Texas
Sep 4, 2006

Houston Community Newspapers

For the next 16 weeks, Chris Stonebraker and Mike Wilkes are living out every man's dream.

The two college grads from Placerville, Calif., are traveling across the country in a decked-out RV to witness 16 of the most highly touted high school football games in the lower 48 states.

Sponsored by MaxPreps.com - a new site covering high school sports nationwide - the trip is called the MaxPreps USA Football Road Tour. The Road Tour made its first stop last weekend at the Texas Football Classic in San Antonio, where the site's featured game was The Woodlands vs. Smithson Valley.

About two hours before the noon start of the game, Stonebraker stretched out in the 31-foot Gulfstream that doubles as a moving billboard.

The new Sacramento State alum was visibly exhausted from three straight days of driving that brought him and Wilkes from Cameron Park, Calif., to San Antonio. Or maybe it was from playing all the Madden 2007 on the Xbox 360 the RV is equipped with - or all the live blogging they can do from one of two of the vehicle's internet-ready computers.

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Despite the fatigue, he couldn't hide the excitement of what he was actually doing.

"I was talking with (MaxPreps CEO) Andy Beal and he had been thinking about doing this trip for a while," Stonebraker said. "Next thing you know he said he wanted to send me and Mike across the nation. I was like, 'Send me away.' Now it's just us two in an RV traveling the nation for 16 weeks. This is our first stop, Texas, the heartland of American football."

The Lone Star State wasn't able to provide him the best action Saturday afternoon, as The Woodlands and Smithson Valley played a scoreless second half before SV won, 17-3.
The outcome was the opposite of what Stonebraker had predicted, but all is not lost. This weekend the MaxPreps Express will be in Oklahoma to watch Jenks and Tulsa duke it out. The next week it will stop by the Kirk Herbstreit Classic in Ohio, where St. Xavier (Ohio) will play Lakeland (Fla.).

The first 10 weeks will feature regular season games from California to New Jersey and everywhere in between. The last six weeks will highlight various state playoff games, wrapping up on Dec. 16 with California's first state championship game since 1929.

"I want to see where the best football comes from," Stonebraker said. "We're just trying to make everyone see high school football for what it is. It's not only the players; it's the parents, the support. It's the fans like myself and Mike that love high school football and want to see it."

But Stonebraker and Wilkes won't just be watching the games this fall. They'll be passing out t-shirts and posters promoting the Road Tour, as well as conducting interviews with players and coaches that will stream on the website. Even hilarious road trip moments - like last week's septic-cleaning mishap or Madden highlights - will be uploaded.

In light of the steroid debate exploding into the national spotlight, the road trippers will also launch an anti-steroid effort among high schoolers called "Keep It Real." Their goal is to get numerous on-camera spots by prep athletes denouncing performance-enhancing drugs.

"It's a little public service thing we're doing to get the message out to keep it real and avoid drugs of any kind," Stonebraker said. "We basically want the kids in high school to hear it from their peers that you don't need steroids to be a successful athlete."

The duo won't be back in Texas until Sept. 29, when they will see defending 5A Division I champ Euless Trinity play South Grand Prairie. But if a first impression is the biggest, then Saturday's fervor at the Alamodome might have kicked their "road trip of a lifetime" off in style.

"Why not start it in a place that has so much love for high school football?" Stonebraker asked. "It's like every movie you ever see about high school football is about Texas. We wanted to make it a bang by starting it here."