Local didn't travel express

MIAMI -- The text message was delivered shortly after the Indianapolis Colts clinched a berth in Super Bowl XLI, and rookie defensive end Ryan LaCasse looked at his cell phone and smiled. It's always nice to hear from Lofa Tatupu.

Tatupu played in Super Bowl XL last year, and the only thing better to cap off his rookie season with the Seattle Seahawks would have been a victory. His text message to LaCasse was one of congratulations, as well as a reminder of where both players got their start, back in Massachusetts.

"It's real cool, just to have someone you played against in high school, and you're going to back-to-back Super Bowls," LaCasse said before the Colts boarded their flight to South Florida yesterday. "Massachusetts isn't exactly a hotbed of high school football, but we just reflected on two guys coming out of the Hockomock League."

LaCasse remembers it well, suiting up for Stoughton High, looking across the line of scrimmage as a senior in 2000, and seeing Tatupu, who was playing quarterback for Wrentham-based King Philip. LaCasse had two sacks that day, as Tatupu was playing with a sprained ankle.

They've both come a long way, and if LaCasse hadn't realized that, all he had to do was look around last night. He had just arrived at the Super Bowl.

"It's pretty crazy being a week away from playing in one of the biggest, if not the biggest, sporting events in the world," he said. "It is a little bit overwhelming when you think about it in that context, and the big circus that goes on around it. It's something I never thought of, because my big thing was just to get in the NFL. I was just looking to be a guy on one of the 32 teams, not necessarily a guy on a Super Bowl team."

Last year at this time, LaCasse was watching the Super Bowl in a hotel room in Alpharetta, Ga., where he was training for the NFL combine after a five-year college career at Syracuse. Never could he have imagined how the next year would unfold.

His combine performance was impressive, and he heard a buzz that he could be drafted in the middle rounds. Yet his name wasn't called until the seventh round, the Baltimore Ravens selecting him with the 219th pick, with a plan to switch him to linebacker.

Then at the end of training camp, LaCasse's journey took another unexpected turn.

The Ravens planned on waiving him and re-signing him to the practice squad, but the Colts swooped in. They long had their eye on LaCasse -- they had him in for a predraft visit and felt he would be a good fit at defensive end in their smaller, quicker defense -- and told the Ravens they would claim him on waivers.

That left the Ravens a few choices.

They could keep LaCasse on their 53-man roster. They could waive him and see if the Colts were bluffing. Or they could accept the Colts' offer of a draft choice to acquire LaCasse in a trade.

The Ravens chose the last option and LaCasse, who turns 24 two days after the Super Bowl, packed his bags and headed to Indianapolis. He played in 12 regular-season games, contributing mostly on special teams, his 13 tackles ranking sixth on the club. One of the highlights was being credited with two assisted tackles in the Colts' 27-20 win over the Patriots at Gillette Stadium Nov. 5, playing against the team he rooted for as a kid.

LaCasse's role has been limited of late; he was inactive for four of the final five regular-season games, and two of the Colts' three playoff contests, including the AFC Championship vs. the Patriots. But that didn't stop his phone from ringing minutes after the Colts clinched a spot in the Super Bowl with "a lot of random calls and people I haven't heard from in a while" looking for tickets.

Other calls have been genuine, from people such as Jeremy Ng, a former assistant track coach at Stoughton High who will be one of LaCasse's guests at the Super Bowl.

"We used to train in a hallway at the school, shutting the doors of the rooms, and making sure no one was coming so he wouldn't run over a teacher," recalled Ng, who also helped LaCasse train for the NFL combine. "Sometimes we'd be out in the snow, or we'd go to Stonehill, sneak in, and keep the lights off so no one knew we were in there. I think about that, and then I think about seeing him come out of that tunnel for the Super Bowl, and it's just awesome."

LaCasse also will have his mother, Dotty O'Donnell, and sister, Nicole, on hand for the Super Bowl. It's been a wild ride, and he wants them there to experience the ending with him.

"It's been a chain of events that I could have never predicted that had led me here," he said. "There is no other to way explain it."