Last fall’s IHSA football championship for Central had Naperville newspapers, high schools and local residents buzzing. Imaginably so, the media surrounding the California De La Salle High School football team’s 151-game winning streak was considerably larger.

It was in 2004 when the De La Salle Spartans suffered their first loss in years. Naperville resident Neil Hayes was living and working for a California newspaper at the time the Spartans were gaining recognition, and wrote “When the Game Stands Tall” about the football team’s experiences. A film based on Hayes’ book hits movie theaters today.

Hayes attended a sneak preview of the film held at Hollywood Palms Cinema last month.

“As the streak continued, everyone was asking the question: ‘how do they do it?’,” Hayes said. “And [so] I started hanging out around the school in the summer of 2002 to try to answer that question.

To find the answer, Hayes went to De La Salle High School every day for a year on the advice of the school’s football coach, Bob Ladouceur. The results Hayes found were that the streak wasn’t based on the drive to win. Instead, he determined, the winning followed the hard work the team put in.

“Ladouceur coached the game from a whole different level,” Hayes said. “I don’t think you can win 151 games in a row when you’re trying to win, but winning was never the focus. It was always on other things, whether it was brother hood or accountability or work ethic.”

After Hayes’ book was published in 2003, he wrote an epilogue that was added to paperback copies in 2004. Later, Hollywood came calling.

“I don’t think you ever expect it, but I kind of said ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’,” Hayes said about the movie production of his book.

Hayes has a special connection not only to the movie’s plot, but also to its production staff. His own son, a sophomore at Metea Valley High School during the film’s 2013 shoot, worked for the film’s camera department.

“I took him out of school and he took some [school work] with him…so that was grueling, but I thought it was a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Hayes said about his son, Nick.

Nick worked the same schedule as the rest of the staff, there for the entirety of shooting despite the long hours. Not wanting to be known as Neil’s son, Nick called his father “Mr. H” and took his job responsibilities seriously.

“[Nick] really became part of the team,” Hayes said. “He earned a lot of respect from people. They all had this incredible experience together and they all worked extremely hard – that creates relationships.”

For the Hayes family, that hard work fully pays off with the release of the film in movie theaters today.

“Everyone I worked with had as much respect for the real people as I did,” Hayes said. “[And] in the end, the coaches themselves were very happy with it. And if they’re happy, I’m happy, because that means we’ve portrayed them correctly.”

Viewers who decide to stay in their seats through the closing credits of “When the Game Stands Tall” will also be treated to clips of the real Bob Ladouceur in action.

“[That was] my favorite part,” Hayes said. “The real coach is actually delivering some of the same lines he says in the movie. I just think that’s so powerful because it shows how true we tried to make the story.”

“When the Game Stands Tall” is now in wide release at many movie theaters in the Chicago area.