Stepping into the locker room beneath Jack Harris Stadium at Mountain View High is like stepping into a museum of the school’s football program.

The walls are plastered with posters of teams that have won Intermountain Conference titles (that’ll need to be updated), previous records held from all the past teams and players (multiple of them fell this year) and where great Cougar players’ names (names that have made it to the NFL and to the Olympics) are enshrined.

This is where Brian and Connor Crum found themselves after Monday’s football practice. It is where Brian, the Mountain View head coach, and Connor, the senior quarterback, dissect game film for upcoming opponents, looking for any type of trend, tendency or anything as discreet as a hand signal that could be used to their advantage on Friday nights.

“I do enjoy watching film,” Connor Crum said. “It helps me make sure I am prepared.”

They are preparing for the biggest game of the season when they take on No. 1 Wilsonville on Friday at 4:30 p.m. in the Class 5A state championship game at Hillsboro Stadium.

The Crums have milked every possible minute out of this final season together. And no matter the outcome Friday, the “Crum Era” with the dad coaching and the son playing on the field will come to an end.

“It has been a long season,” Connor Crum said. “It has been awesome having all this success and doing it together in our last year together.”

The season that the Cougars have put together this year is one that sports movies are based on. A middling team that last won a playoff game in 2017 has won each and every one of the 12 games they’ve played this year. They are 5A’s last undefeated team standing heading into the final game against Wilsonville, which is making its fourth state title appearance since 2016.

No team has scored more than 20 points against Mountain View this season. They’ve pitched four shutouts on the season and are coming off a performance where they held 5A’s highest scoring team, Silverton (who was scoring 43.3 points per game) to just 19 points.

Its offense has been balanced and dynamic. One game it could be sophomore running back Angel Valenzuela breaking off huge runs and the next it could be junior wideout Jack Foley hauling in touchdown passes with ease. During the three postseason games, both are happening simultaneously, with the Cougars averaging 43 points per game.

Orchestrating the offense was Connor Crum, the cerebral quarterback who was named the Intermountain Conference’s Player of the Year who will enter Friday’s game against Wilsonville with 1,560 passing yards and 24 passing touchdowns to go along with 330 rushing yards and six touchdowns on the ground.

It is the type of season that dating back over a decade, Brian Crum could only dream that his son, if football was his path, and his team might one day realize.

“If you told me 10 or 15 years ago, what would I want?” Crum said. “I want him to play well enough to be considered the conference’s player of the year. He did that. And I would love to have a chance at a state championship.”

Check and check.

Mountain View will play in its first state title game since 2011, a game Connor recalls sitting in the stands with his mother, Vanessa, as the Cougars took down Sherwood 14-13 on the same field they will be playing on Friday against Wilsonville.

“I just remember seeing how excited she was when we won,” Connor said, “just seeing how excited she was for him and the team.”

Sports in the family

There is no chance at escaping sports in the Crum household. There was always a game — no matter the sport — on the TV. And for Connor, there was no escaping having his dad coach as a coach.

He coached his son in T-ball through junior baseball, joined forces with Mountain View basketball coach Bob Townsend and his son Quincy to coach basketball when the now seniors were fifth-graders. Now he’s been coached by his dad not only for the Mountain View football team, but Brian Crum is also an assistant coach on Mountain View’s baseball team.

“I’ve been super lucky and grateful that he has always let me coach him,” Brian Crum said. “Not every kid wants their parents to be their teacher or coach.”

And being the son of a coach had its perks.

From the time he was old enough around the age of 6 or 7, he was on the Mountain View sidelines as the team’s ball and water boy. He was able to travel on the bus to road games with the team. During the summers they would attend Linfield’s football camp where he developed an entrepreneurial spirit by swiping ice cream from the cafeteria and then try to sell it to the other teams at the camp.

Even watching college or NFL football games at home would turn into mini-film sessions with Brian constantly rewinding plays to add notes about how a team would disguise their coverages, when to not take sacks and how to handle timeouts.

“At home you are able to ask questions about stuff, watch film, talk about things that happened that day at practice that other kids don’t do,” Connor Crum said. “Just having other resources and being on the same page as the head coach and asking those kinds of questions is really beneficial for sure.”

Those experiences at an early age have molded Crum into the player he is now, where his greatest weapon is his understanding of the game. It was at an early age on the baseball field that Brian Crum began to notice that his son had the innate ability to be a couple of steps ahead on the playing field.

“Whether it is baseball or football or basketball, he is a step ahead, he knows what is coming next ,” Brian Crum said. “He’s just wired that way.”

Added Connor Crum: “I wondered why the other kids weren’t thinking that far ahead. Why don’t you watch a ton of sports? Why aren’t you always thinking the same way?”

It is seen time and time again Friday nights: Crum will change the plays at the line of scrimmage based on what he sees from the defense.

On the first play of last Friday’s semifinal game against No. 2 Silverton at McNary High School, Crum saw that the Foxes had overloaded one side of the field with defenders, which would have swallowed up the play that was originally called.

So he changed the play, picked up 24 yards with his feet, and the Cougars ultimately pulled away 42-19 behind a four-touchdown performance from Crum.

“That set the tone for the entire game,” Brian Crum said.

These days, whenever Connor wants to change the call at the line of scrimmage, he is not going to get any pushback from his coach.

“We see things in the same frame and we can bounce ideas off each other,” Brian Crum said. “I don’t even have to finish sentences. I don’t have to finish signals. He knows what comes next.

A mother’s support — always

Vanessa Crum would have thoroughly enjoyed this season.

Perhaps much more so than when she was sitting in the stands, a bit fearful, watching her 137-pound son — who was only a couple years removed from being diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes and who has to wear an insulin pump on his arm — make his varsity debut late in his sophomore year.

“She loved to watch him play. And she still is,” Brian Crum said. “I know she is watching over him, cheering him on and protecting him. She was his No. 1 fan, and mine too.”

Vanessa Crum died on April 7, 2022, from liver and autoimmune issues. She was 47 years old. She had recovered from the illness in 2018, but in March of 2022 it returned.

Brian Crum is an optimist through and through. Perhaps that is why he always wears basketball shorts even on the coldest of Friday nights. “It’s always 72 degrees and sunny,” he said on a cold game night in October.

But having his wife go through a second bout with the illness that took her life tested his optimistic disposition.

“You never know why you get sick and you get better and another time why you get sick and you don’t get better,” Brian Crum said. “For whatever reason, that is just how I’m wired and I’m wired for that. There is grief, still grief. I’m just not the guy who is going to go through life being negative.”

Vanessa Crum was an educator and a mother of three. And Brian Crum sees so many of his wife’s traits in his son.

“She was steady, too; he got that from her for sure,” Brian Crum said. “She was passionate about things; he is too. He is a kind and loving person. That is the biggest thing that he got from his mom. She was kind, passionate and empathetic; he’s always been that. A good friend, a good teammate. That was her to a T.”

Vanessa was the one who in a way kick-started Connor hanging out at Brian’s practices. With three young kids at home — Connor with older sister Emma and younger sister Hailey — and Brian working long hours with football, she began telling Brian to take Connor with him.

Senior Night — where players playing in their final home game are honored before the game, usually with their families — was not an easy night for the Crums. Of course his dad was there, so were his two sisters and his grandparents. But he would have loved to have his mom with him, too.

“It was super emotional,” Connor Crum said “This is where I’m thankful to have this group of guys and coaches around me who care about me and make sure that I am all right. It was emotional not having her there with me.”

It was an emotional night for Brian Crum as well. And he wondered if the moment would be too big for his son, playing in his final regular season game.

Instead, that steadiness, a trait from his mother, shined through. He threw four touchdown passes, returned an interception for another touchdown and helped Mountain View finish the season undefeated and pick up its first win over the Bend High Lava Bears in three years.

“She was at everything supporting me and my dad,” Connor Crum said. “She would be so proud of us.”

Last week together

The late stages of Monday’s practice showed a Mountain View team loose and ready — laughing and cracking jokes with one another as they ran back to their huddles getting ready for the next play.

Once the regular season ended a little over three weeks ago, all the team focused on was getting one more week practicing and competing together. They have maxed out on that goal this fall.

Mountain View will have tallied 70 practices once it finishes its practice on Thanksgiving Day. Then on Friday, it will hop on a bus, like the Crums have been doing together for more than a decade, and make a trip across the mountains as a team to Hillsboro Stadium to take the field one final time.

“I’m going to miss working with this group of guys,” Connor Crum said. “I’m grateful for how good of teammates they are.”

For Brian Crum, it has been a week of keeping things in perspective. Yes, Friday’s matchup against Wilsonville will be the biggest game he’s coached since taking over the program in 2012. But he doesn’t want to get too focused on the grind of preparing for a game of this magnitude without taking a step back realizing just how special sharing this season with his son has been.

“This is my last week with him,” he said. “Make sure you enjoy it, make sure you love it. Yes I’m going to coach my ass off, but I’m also going to look at him a couple of times and burn these memories into my mind because this is the last time.”