The 5-0 Rams of Fresno City College (FCC) understand that there are still a few more real tough games ahead of them; yet, winning the championship is starting to have a nice ring as a goal.
There are two twin players on the team named A.J and Tony Savaii; they definitely have a starting roll in the script that if played right will end up with FCC in the championship game against whomever.
If you have been to a Fresno City College game, you would have noticed A.J is the player that if the quarterback does not move, he will be pushing the offensive guard right into the quarter back and Tony is the solid player who puts in work like a journeyman on the offensive line.
A.J. is a member of a play making defense that has a tendency of forcing the other teams quarterback into making mistakes which usually end up with a FCC defensive player putting points on the board – with an interception or a fumble, ran back for a touch down, he pointing out his belief.
“Once our offense starts to click up to the level of the defense, we got a championship team.” His brother Tony seemed to silently agree.
It is commonly known that what players do in the trenches of the defensive and offensive line can set the tempo of the game, so the question that was asked was what was it like in the trenches?
“On defense, no matter what you’re doing, you’re gonna get hurt. You can get stepped on or get your fingernails ripped off.” A.J held his hand up pointing out his ripped off fingernail.
Both of their voices began to intensify as they began cutting in on each other to make their points. “Put it this way,” said Tony, “Offensive linemen have more to do because they have to protect the quarter back without knowing exactly his QB location.”
“The defensive linemen have to get past the offensive lineman and chase after the quarterback,” then A.J injected his take, “He don’t know nothing about defense man. We don’t just rush the quarterback, you gotta know different techniques, we got to know our gap- we gotta know our stunts” another play yelled out the blue “alignment assignment,” as A.J. added that point to his list of duties as a defensive lineman position.
The two were about to verbally take off on each other before they were halted.
The Savaii twins who moved from North Carolina on to Taft California remember being treated like Afro-Americans.
The twins also believed that the racism had nothing to do with the fact that they were poor or raised in the black community in the South. “There were some people who didn’t like us because we were colored,” said A.J. “Some called us the N-word. We got into a lot of fights over that.
Taft is the town where the twins were influenced to play football. The two 17 year olds can remember being moved up a grade from the sixth to the seventh. They believed that they were moved up because they were too big.
They spent their lives using their size to their advantage while they were kids, “We liked to play rough in the six-grade,” A.J. said. They considered themselves to be bullies in high school. The twins remember being tested, “every body was like ‘that dude is big, I bet you and I can take him,’ said Tony. Fortunately football was the perfect outlet to release their sometime extreme aggression.
A.J. believes that if it weren’t for football that he would have ended up hustling in the streets.
The two twins also have what they believe is a sound philosophy for being students at FCC. Coach Tony Caviglia has a similar philosophy that the twins’ dad offered them before making their treck to College.
Caviglia wants to create the attitude that their road games as well as all their home games are like a business trip. Their job is to go into a city and play their game great and move on to the next game.
Tony said, “My dad told us to understand that school was first football was second.” The Savaii Twins dad explained to them that what they are doing today at school and on the football field is about business. “We are just here to handle our business and move on.”
