Mater Dei High School in Santa Anna, California is known for producing high quality athletes. It’s a powerhouse in high school football and has given us numerous recruits over the years, and mostly quarterbacks. Two Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks played high school football at Mater Dei, John Huarte and Matt Leinart. Besides these two, the program has produced top recruits such as Matt Barkley, Colt Brennan, Jason Forcier, Max Wittek and the most infamous of them all, Todd Marinovich, although they may not claim him. Current USC quarterback, J.T. Daniels is a graduate of Mater Dei, and the Trojans have the top dual threat quarterback in the country, Bryce Young, committed for next year’s class. If you haven’t seen Bryce Young play, he’s sensational and a probable future star, and Daniels should have been a senior at Mater Dei this season, but skipped his senior year to go to the next level and he started which is incredible.
While known probably as quarterback high, Mater Dei produces more talent than just at that position. Last season, they had super wide receiver Amon-Ra St Brown and this year they had 5 star wide
receiver/defensive back prospect Bru McCoy and both are either at USC, or on their way.
In the late 1990’s, Mater Dei had another young super star in linebacker Matt Grootegoed. In high school, Grootegoed was an all everything, playing linebacker, safety, running back and even some quarterback. But, the quarterback position was in good hands with future Heisman winner Matt Leinart also on the team.
According to Wikipedia, and as we all know that site is always accurate, Grootegoed ran for over 1,600 yards as a junior at Mater Dei in 1998. They also have him down as making 130 tackles and causing 6 fumbles, with 3 interceptions.
In the state championship game against the equally powerful California high school, Long Beach Poly, Grootegoed ran for an amazing 244 yards on 33 carries. He was selected Most Valuable Player on both sides of the ball. The game is available for viewing on Youtube and the 1998 Long Beach Poly team was supposed to be one of the greatest high school football teams of all time.
Maybe Long Beach Poly was one of the greatest teams of all time, but that game grew the legend of Matt Grootegoed like no other. The internet was sort of in it’s infancy back in the 1990s and nothing like it is today, but even over a 1,000 miles away, I had heard great things about Grootegoed.
After his junior year in high school, Grootegoed was pretty much all everything. Maybe his biggest honor was as a junior All American.
Going into his senior season of 1999, Mater Dei had already won two state championships and they were looking for a third. Grootegoed was, by then, one of the nation’s hottest recruits. He wasn’t big at all, at about 5-11 and maybe 210. But, he was fast, strong, tough and very tenacious. He just made things happen and seemed to always be around the football.
As a senior, his rushing numbers dropped off, but he was equally effective on defense. Actually, he played safety and picked off 6 passes returning 2 for touchdowns and he even had more tackles than as a junior at linebacker. Early in the year, he played some at quarterback and threw for over 300 yards. This kid could do it all, and most schools wanted him.
Matt Grootegoed wound up signing with USC even before Pete Carroll arrived on the scene.
Paul Hackett was in his last season as the head coach at USC and the Trojans finished 5-7, while
freshman Grootegoed redshirted.
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As a redshirt freshman in 2001, Grootegoed started at linebacker, but the team was not very good finishing with a 6-6 record in Carroll’s first season. But, Pete Carroll is a tireless worker and that energy rolled over into recruiting and USC was recruiting lights out. They were continuously recruiting some of the nation’s very best players, such as Grootegoed’s high school teammate, Matt Leinart and others like Reggie Bush. Carroll would soon put together a team like the nation had rarely seen in college football.
Things changed dramatically on the field in Pete Carroll’s second season. The Trojans won the Pac 10 Conference championship with an 11-2 record and crushed Iowa in the Rose Bowl. Quarterback Carson Palmer won the Heisman Trophy while leading his team against 9 ranked opponents. That’s right, they played 9 ranked opponents in a 13 game season.
2003 was Pete Carroll’s first national championship, unless you are an LSU fan. It was a split national title that season with USC winning the AP poll, and LSU winning the coaches poll. I have little faith in the coaches poll because I have seen how it works.
USC lost in their 4th game of the season to an Aaron Rodgers led Cal Berkeley, 31-34. But, the Trojans turned it up a notch, or two, after that and crushed the rest of their schedule including 6th ranked Washington State, a bad Notre Dame team, and rivals UCLA.
Grootegoed was a second team all Pac 10 that season as a junior.
USC was a clear national champion in 2004 with a final 13-0 record. They got their revenge on Cal and Aaron Rodgers, and mostly just bulldozed everyone else on their schedule. There were a few exceptions and close wins, but in the national title game again Oklahoma, the Trojans just stuffed
them, 55-19. It really wasn’t as close as the score indicated.
Trojan quarterback Matt Leonard won the coveted Heisman Trophy, and tailback Reggie Bush finished fifth in the voting.
Matt Grootegoed was not only first team All Conference, he was also a consensus All American in leading one of the better defenses in the country.
Grootegoed was not the prototype NFL linebacker, so he got little love come draft day. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed Grootegoed as a free agent, and he was on their practice squad briefly, and then he played a short while with the Detroit Lions before being released. He wound up in Canada with the CFL for a few seasons, but he was out of football by 2009.
A 6-4, 240 Grootegoed would have been a monster in the NFL, but he was greatly undersized and his pro career didn’t last long.
He may not have made it big as a pro, but as a high school and college player, they didn’t come much tougher, or better, than Matt Grootegoed.