‘Our little sunshine’: Grant’s JoJo McCray passes Pacers into CIF state championship game
It looks like the same guy. The long blond hair, the shy smile, the good manners.
But this is a different JoJo McCray. This is a confident, more polished version of the 2021 McCray.
His real name is Joseph, but the Grant High School senior quarterback prefers JoJo to match his easy-going style. A year ago, his name might as well have been “Mud” because that’s what the Pacers felt like — a team in the dirt, trampled on, run over, left for dead.
McCray started at quarterback for those Pacers last season. He endured that 0-9 season but didn’t think about leaving. He thought about getting better. McCray went from a quarterback trying to keep the Pacers in games to a star who has been a focal point for a remarkable rise to relevance.
Grant is 11-2, a Sac-Joaquin Section champion, a CIF Northern California regional champion, and, again, the toast of the Del Paso Heights community. The Pacers will head into their own Rutherford Stadium on Saturday night for a 6 p.m. kickoff against San Jacinto of Riverside County for the CIF Division III-AA championship. The guy wearing jersey No. 10 very well may lead that charge.
“It’s amazing what we’ve done, and it’s amazing what a team can do when we all buy in and we’re in it together,” McCray said.
Grant coaches have another tag for their ace leader.
“He’s our little sunshine,” Pacers quarterback coach Josiah Johnson said. “He knows it. We tease him about it. He does such a good job of being in the moment. He’s our guy.”
Last Friday, McCray seized the moment again. He passed for 244 yards and two touchdowns, and he ran for one as the Pacers belted an El Cerrito team that came in 13-0 by the score of 36-7.
Said McCray said after the game, “Who would’ve thought we would’ve made our run for a state championship this year? We’re like a big family, even the community. We all went through that 0-9 together. We all came back and we worked as hard as we could. We bonded.”
McCray never envisioned any of this, not that he doubted himself, or his coaches, or his teammates. But teams simply do not go 0-9, return the bulk of the lineup and roar right into a CIF state final. But Grant isn’t just anybody. The Pacers know a thing or two about winning. They can also speak of rising from nothing. The rigors of the Sierra Foothill League with area bruisers Folsom, Granite Bay, Del Oro, Rocklin and Oak Ridge humbled the Pacers, knocked them down to size, leading to the 1-9 showing in 2019 and last year’s skid.
Realigned back into the Metro League, the Pacers found themselves, and kept growing. No one has grown more than McCray, and that goes beyond his long locks and and an added 15 pounds.
McCray matured as a passer and a leader. He has thrown for 3,796 yards and 48 touchdowns, both school records. The 48 TD tosses are one better than what Chad Elliott produced for Grant in 1996 when the Pacers went 12-2 and won the Sac-Joaquin Section Division I championship. Elliott had three interceptions that season. McCray has five.
And McCray has a little Elliott in him, which is to say he walks to his own unique beat, a free spirit who is fearless. Elliott broke the Grant single-season touchdown mark held by Aaron Garcia, who had 40 TD passes in 1987. Elliott played at Arizona State and Garcia at Washington State and Sacramento State. Elliott hopes to secure a college scholarship but is finding out how competitive that game is.
Elliott’s mark stood as a regional record until Dano Graves of Folsom passed for 52 touchdowns in 2009 as a junior. Graves bettered that mark with 62 touchdown passes in 2010 during a CIF state championship season. Folsom has the area’s top six single-season touchdown records and nine of the top 10 as the Bulldogs ushered in a new era of wide-open passing. Jake Browning’s 91 touchdown passes in 2014 were for a 16-0 Folsom team that won a state championship. That’s a national prep record, as are his 229 career touchdown passes over three years. Browning starred at Washington in the Pac-12 and is with the Cincinnati Bengals.
So here’s McCray, all 6 feet and 180 pounds of potential, and he’s the first to tell you he’s not the same dude.
“Oh, I’m so much better,” he said. “We all are.”
Following the win over El Cerrito, Grant coach Carl Reed said: “If you looked at him last year, people don’t believe that’s the same quarterback still. “That tells you a lot right there. Is that the same guy? Yeah, that is the same guy. But that’s a tribute to his quarterback coach, for sure.”
That quarterback coach is Johnson., a first-year Pacers coach who was on the Folsom High staff last season. Johnson knows how to throw it, too, or did when he was a kid. Johnson in 2012 passed for 42 touchdowns in 12 games for Sacramento High. McCray said his position coach made all the difference, breaking his game down to mechanics.
“He set me up for success,” McCray said.
Johnson said McCray withstood the “fire” of the SFL wars. He saw on film before the season that McCray had the ability but not the confidence. He has all of it now.
“Well, he’s hungry, and he’s coachable, a true leader, extremely smart,” Johnson said. “This system we installed is not easy, but all the information he’s gathered, how he’s played ... it’s impressive. I ask him to do a lot. We depend on him to do a lot and he does it. He shows up, masters the game plan every week. If he was 6-4, he’d be a national recruit. He can play. He just needs a shot.”
Touchdown Tossers
A peek at the all-time single-season touchdown records for Sacramento-area quarterbacks
91 - Jake Browning, Folsom, 2014 (16 games)
75 - Jake Browning, Folsom, 2013, (15)
64 - Jake Browning, Folsom, 2012 (15)
62 - Dano Graves, Folsom, 2010 (15)
62 - Kaiden Bennett, Folsom, 2018 (15)
57 - Kaiden Bennett, Folsom, 2017 (16)
56 - Caden Voges, Sacramento, 2014 (14)
53 - Joe Curry, Folsom, 2016 (14)
52 - Dano Graves, Folsom, 2009 (12)
50 - Jake Jeffrey, Folsom, 2015 (15)
49 - Tanner Trosin, Folsom, 2011 (14)
49 - Brent Schaeffer, Vista del Lago, 2016 (12)
48 - JoJo McCray, Grant, 2022 (13)
48 - Gunnor Faulk, Christian Brothers, 2017 (13)
47 - Chad Elliott, Grant, 1996 (14)
46 - Michael Wilson, Colfax, 2013 (12)
45 - Marino Fragata, Johnson, 2022 (12)
45 - Hunter Rodrigues, Whitney, 2015 (10)
42 - Josiah Johnson, Sacramento, 2012 (11)
42 - Randy Post, Sutter, 2014 (14)
42 - Derek Shelton, Sacramento, 2017 (11)
41 - Nate Ray, Colfax, 1999 (12)
41 - Chandler Clemons, Oak Ridge, 2004 (13)
40 - Aaron Garcia, Grant, 1987 (12)
40 - Andy Bryner, Del Campo, 1997 (12)
40 - David Graves, Folsom, 2008 (11)
40 - Austin Mack, Folsom, 2022 (14)
Source: Cal-Hi Sports and Bee archives