‘Helluva ride’: After going dormant, Grant Pacers regain former glory in section playoffs
Every year at the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section championship breakfast, football coaches talk about their journey. They detail the ups and downs of the grind, the rewards and the angst.
Often, coaches joke about how fans in their football fanatical communities aren’t afraid to unleash all manner of verbal fury. Some may even plant a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn of a coach, a not-so-subtle hint to hit the road. Only, sometimes it’s not so funny. It’s real.
“I didn’t get the ‘For Sale’ signs last year,” Grant High School coach Carl Reed said of a lean 2021 season. “I got the ‘Get the hell out!’ kind of signs. We’re a community school in Del Paso Heights. We are in our own bubble. They will support us and they will let us know when they’re upset.”
These days, everyone is darn near giddy on the 1400 Grand Avenue campus and the neighboring regions. Grant is back in play, back in a championship game, back in full-on swagger. The 9-2 Pacers will take on 10-2 Christian Brothers for the Division III banner on Friday at 1 p.m. at Hughes Stadium. There has been a longtime theme among longtime area coaches and media that the playoffs are better when the Pacers are in it, because of how they compete, the athletes they trot out, the tradition and the nationally acclaimed school drumline reverberating as a backdrop.
“Yes, true,” Reed said.
In 2021, Grant fans were plenty irked, putting it mildly. Losing doesn’t vibe well with the storied Pacers or their backers. Grant fans young and old expressed discord during many a 12-1 season over the decades because it simply wasn’t good enough. Some didn’t hesitate to work their way onto the field, during games, to vent at referees, coaches or even their own sons.
Grant set the regional standard for gridiron excellence, leading the Sacramento area in victories in the 1990s and 2000s under section Hall of Fame coach Mike Alberghini. The program won seven section banners in eight attempts from 1991-2014 in reaching the playoffs 27 consecutive seasons. Grant officially put the region on the state football map with its 2008 CIF State Open Division championship, still the only public school in the state to do so. That was the region’s first state football crown, and it seemed perfectly fitting that it was Grant that made the breakthrough.
The wheels of the Grant express started to buckle in 2019. The Pacers went 1-9, a down cycle that’s common for public schools but had not been a trend in Del Paso Heights. A 2-0 COVID spring season showing was the last hurrah for Alberghini, the regional record holder with 282 victories. Reed took over as head coach after years as an assistant with the program. His Pacers limped home at 0-9 last fall.
Reed went from the beloved alum of the school, the trusted longtime computer science teacher on campus, to the scapegoat. No one absorbed the losses more than Reed.
“My first year didn’t go so well,” Reed said. “We brought all our players in to talk about it after the season, and they spoke candidly. They told us what they thought. It got real. We needed to make structural differences in the program and we did. It’s been a rebirth. We were dormant. We hit rock bottom.”
Grant assistant coach Syd Thompson, who excelled at Cal and reached the NFL, is one of an army of assistants who starred at the school. He returned to his roots to give back. Thompson stressed to players, “Win the day.” Win it in weight lifting, in class, in workouts. Every single day.
When the Pacers and their coaches saw that they were not preseason ranked by The Bee in August, they fumed. They used it as a driving force to show that the program had not fallen off the cliff.
“A lot of people thought we were dead, and we took that personally,” Reed said. “It showed on the field, and we’re not done. We want more.”
They’ll get more with a challenge from the talented Falcons. Grant’s only regional loss was to Monterey Trail, 49-42, to decide the Metro League championship. The Pacers have stormed through the playoffs, blasting Yuba City 64-28 and Paterson 80-44 in a semifinal in what looked more like a basketball score. The Pacers scored every which way — kickoff returns, interception returns, long runs, big passes. Kyrell Goss-Pruitt returned a kickoff 97 yards for a score against Patterson, Kingston Lopa took an interception 99 yards into the end zone, and Semaj Mafu-Hart had touchdown bursts of 61 and 68 yards.
The Pacers look every bit like some of their powerhouse teams of yesteryear. There is size in the trenches, speed all over, and ferocity on defense. Said Paterson coach Rob Cozart after the semifinal loss, “They are explosive. You can’t scheme 6-foot-5. You can’t scheme 4.3 (speed). We could not slow them down. They are extremely talented.”
The 6-4 Lopa, a linebacker with speed, has garnered national recruiting interest from the Pac-12 to the SEC. Lineman Alani Noa, all 6-4 and 320 pounds of him, has given a verbal commitment to USC. JoJo McCray hopes to play in college, too. He has led the offensive charge. The 6-1, 185-pound senior has tossed 45 touchdowns and regularly credits his linemen, his targets and his coaches.
McCray also burdened the load of the 0-9 season because he was the starting quarterback. McCray never considered leaving the program by transfer, a theme that’s become too common for student-athletes. He vowed to help the program bounce back.
“It was hard, the 0-9,” McCray said. “We put in the time. We worked hard to get back to the old Grant ways.”
Added Reed, “It’s been a helluva ride, but we’re not done. We can do more.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2022 at 6:00 AM.