Five years gone

Then, as Robert Plant was singing that fantastic bridge halfway through the song — “Do you ever remember me, baby?” — it hit me: Leder, Greenspan, and their old San Mateo National teammates are at the halfway point of being ten years gone from their run to the Northern California Little League tournament in the summer of 2019.

“That baseball team was definitely one of the best sports teams I’ve been a part of,” Leder said. “That run that we went on — we were all super close friends. I’m still close with a bunch of the kids now. But that definitely ranks up there with the best teams I’ve been on.”

It was early in the 2021 high school football season when I was making my way across Freitas Field after a Serra game when I got a shoutout and a big smile from a student I did not recognize. It turned out to be Leder.

In my defense, Leder had done some growing in the two years since I covered his San Mateo National team. In 2019, he wasn’t quite tall enough to look me, at 5-10, right in the eyes. Now, as a senior at Serra, the two-sport standout towers over me at 6-3.

Leder is one of four players from that 2019 San Mateo National squad to play varsity football at Serra this season, along with Greenspan, Riley Lim and Soren Blanchard. All 11 of National’s players have stayed close to home, with Jordan Kiaaina at Aragon; Franklin Kuo and Sean Kelly at Carlmont; and Alejandro Formosa, Tommy Kane, Kurt Schaffer and Casey Strezo at Hillsdale.

It was a great group of boys who, at the end of their 2019 run, gifted me an autographed baseball I treasure to this day.

Leder was called up to the Serra varsity football team in 2022 as a sophomore as a depth piece on the offensive line going into the postseason. He didn’t play much as Serra advanced to its second of their straight CIF Open Division State Championship Bowl games, but he did start at defensive tackle during the program’s third CIF Open Division postseason run last year. He moved back to left tackle this year and again helped the Padres reach the playoffs.

Unlike last season, when Serra cruised through the CCS Open Division tournament, this year — with the Padres seeded No. 4 in the Open Division/Division I bracket — the playoffs were shrouded in uncertainty, an uneasy feeling that was realized in Saturday’s elimination loss to Los Gatos in the opening round of the CCS Division I tournament.

Prior to Saturday’s game, Leder was greeted with a shoutout and a big smile from none other than Greenspan, who realized it could be the last time the two ever set foot on a field together as teammates.

“I gave him a big hug,” Greenspan said. “I said: ‘If this is our last game, I’ve loved you since we were 10 when we met on that baseball diamond.’”

Greenspan understands growing pains to an excruciating degree. While Leder stepped away from the baseball diamond as a freshman and began a promising track-and-field career as a shut-put and discus thrower, Greenspan has played Serra baseball for the past three years. It was a season-ending injury when he was a sophomore that put his athletics career, as a whole, in jeopardy.

While playing left field in a junior-varsity game against Valley Christian, Greenspan was sprinting in on a pop fly when he collided with third baseman Evan Bradshaw. It would turn out to be the last play of the 2022 season for Greenspan, who was hospitalized with a broken jaw and a concussion.

It would be over a month before he was cleared for football activities, and Greenspan would have to ease into action for his first varsity season on the gridiron.

“Especially that team last year was so good, and I didn’t get the chance to be out there right away, and I was recovering,” Greenspan said. “And also being tentative when you’re hitting someone.”

So, it would take a year before Greenspan and Leder were both full-fledged starters like they were on the baseball diamond in 2019. It wasn’t just the injury that slowed Greenspan’s bid for playing time in 2023. He also happened to be playing behind the best linebacker duo in Serra history in Jabari Mann and Danny Niu.

“I looked up to guys like Jabari and Danny, who were linebackers, and I was like: ‘That’s kind of what I want to be like when I’m a senior,’” Greenspan said.

Not only did Greenspan crack the starting lineup this year at linebacker, he suited up for every game, and missed just one due to a minor injury. He said he is still considering playing baseball in the spring, but is entertaining notions of switching to golf, a sport in which his former San Mateo National teammate, Formosa, is seeing great success as an NCAA Division I commit to Columbia University.

Leder navigated away from baseball soon after the summer of 2019. He did try out for the Serra team as a freshman but, admittedly, wasn’t in baseball shape as he hadn’t played for two years. Getting cut from the freshman baseball team turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as he got scooped up by the Serra track-and-field team.

“I actually really wanted to quit at first,” Leder said of finding his way to the throwing pits. “I was not very good. It was making me really frustrated.”

Serra track coaches Jim Marheineke and Elijah Folau implored him to stay with it. Now, he’s glad he did. His relationship with Folau served him on the gridiron as well, as Folau is also an assistant football coach who oversees the line.

As a thrower, Leder has emerged as one half of Serra’s two-headed monster. Senior Luke Lewis is the reigning two-time CCS champion in shot put. While Leder had a disappointing end to his junior year by not making the CCS cut, he did become the second Serra thrower to make the podium his sophomore year, taking fourth place in CCS in the spring of 2023.

“Coach Marheineke and Coach Folau just kept me in it,” Leder said. “And now I love doing it.”

That’s kind of how I feel about “Physical Graffiti.” It was never one of my favorite Zeppelin albums. (I still rate “I” through “IV” ahead of it, with “Houses of the Holy” my all-time favorite.) The double-album excess of “Physical Graffiti” has indeed always seemed like heavy lifting to me. It’s worth staying in it, though, if only for “Ten Years Gone.”

Hopefully, I’ll catch up with Leder, Greenspan, and the boys from San Mateo National in five more years when the 2019 Nor Cal team is officially ten years gone. In the meantime, I will continue to treasure that autographed ball, a ball that, yes indeed, still lives on my desk.