State football champs! Grant High wins it all in last-second thriller after going winless in 2021
Grant High School quarterback JoJo McCray was visibly beside himself.
He sat down on the bench with his head in his hands. He had just lost a fumble that was taken the other way 75 yards for a touchdown. It gave San Jacinto a two-score lead early in the third quarter of Saturday’s CIF Division III-AA state championship game — the biggest night of the season and one of the biggest in Grant history.
McCray needed consoling. Pacers head coach Carl Reed and offensive assistant Josiah Johnson sat him down to deliver a message.
“Stay you,” Reed said. “Be you. You know what to do.”
McCray responded like he has for Grant all year during a historic turnaround from 0-9 to Sac-Joaquin Section, Northern California regional and, now, CIF state champions.
McCray threw a game-winning touchdown pass to receiver Kyle Ryan with less than a minute remaining and the Pacers captured another state title — this one on their home field in Del Paso Heights — with a dramatic 36-34 victory over the Tigers.
“It’s about how you respond in the face of adversity,” Johnson said of McCray. “That’s the sign of a true leader and a true quarterback. It’s not about the numbers. It’s about what you do when the moments count. And when the moment counted the most, he made the play.”
McCray came into the state title game as one of the most prolific passers in California, logging 3,796 yards, 48 touchdowns and just five interceptions 13 games. His team trailed by 12 in the third quarter after the Tigers scored 20 unanswered points to take control of the game, but then McCray hit star receiver Kingston Lopa for a 35-yard touchdown on the next possession.
Lopa said of his quarterback: “He really changed this program around. We haven’t had someone like him in a minute.”
From that point in the third quarter, all hell broke loose.
It was an impossibly dramatic game with everything on the line. Ryan scored the go-ahead touchdown with 30 seconds left, capping a roller-coaster fourth quarter that included five lead changes and five touchdowns combined from both teams.
The postgame celebration was equally as chaotic.
The party on the field prevented the teams from shaking hands. Reed, who was doused with water by his players multiple times, didn’t have an impassioned speech for his team after being presented with the CIF trophy, which is shaped like the state of California. This is the second state championship in Grant history and the school’s first since 2008.
“There’s nothing to say,” Reed told his players. “Mission complete.”
And the Pacers erupted in celebration. Tears flowed. Players collapsed on the field, overcome with emotions. Prayers were said. Family members and friends left the stands to join in the celebration, adding to the pandemonium.
The Grant Pacers, one of the most historic programs in the region, had won another state championship after going 0-9 and 1-9 over the last two full seasons.
What did “mission complete” mean for Reed?
“It means you pretty much did what we had a 1% chance of doing, going from winless to the last team standing,” Reed said. “That’s beyond mission accomplished. That’s taking it. That’s taking everything that they earned and everything they were worth. They took it and earned it.”
It looked bleak at times for the blue and gold. San Jacinto’s star receiver, Dillon Gresham, scored four touchdowns, including the 75-yard fumble return from McCray while playing safety. Gresham was almost impossible to stop. He came into the game with 1,864 receiving yards and 28 touchdowns. And even against Grant’s speedy secondary, he stood out.
Gresham was the target of a 62-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Dereun Dortch with less than five minutes remaining to give his team a 27-24 lead. Gresham also scored San Jacinto’s first two touchdowns in the first half, including a 45-yard bomb.
Dortch gave the Tigers a 34-30 lead with one minute remaining when he scrambled in from 11 yards out, responding to Grant star receiver Kyrell Goss-Pruitt’s 3-yard touchdown run moments earlier.
“There’s so much you can say about them,” Reed said of San Jacinto, a school southeast of Riverside in Southern California. “They were a great team and they battled. But, ultimately, we just had that last play.”
That last play was a quick pass over the middle from McCray to Ryan, who doesn’t garner as much attention as the Pacers’ one-two punch of Lopa and Goss-Pruitt.
Ryan said he knew he would score just before the snap because he and McCray worked on that route during practice leading into the contest.
“The play was called, the quarterback looked at me, (and) he had a little wink,” Ryan said. “And he trusted me, threw me the ball, and then I couldn’t really get in (the end zone) at first.”
It appeared Ryan was stopped just short of the goal line by multiple defenders. But then the cavalry arrived in the form of the entire Grant offense — including 300-plus pound guards Alani Noa and Puka Keliikuli — and Ryan poured into the north end zone. Of course, the home grandstand, filled by much of the Del Paso Heights community, went wild.
“I have some heavy emotions, too,” McCray said, “because I came in there and started pushing, too. I was trying to get KJ (Ryan) in there. It was just crazy when we heard that roar right when he got in the end zone.”
Mistakes and special teams snafus from the Tigers helped the Pacers along the way.
After Dortch’s go-ahead touchdown run, Grant returned the following short kickoff to the 17-yard line, setting up Ryan’s score. Earlier in the fourth quarter, San Jacinto sailed a snap over the punter’s head, turning the ball over deep in its own territory to set up Joshua Hamilton’s 4-yard touchdown run to make it 24-20.
Earlier, on the second play from scrimmage, Grant defensive lineman Marque Green Jr. scored a touchdown on a fumble recovery after Dortch failed to handle a bad snap.
Even as the Tigers responded with touchdowns from Dortch and Gresham, the confidence on Grant’s sideline never wavered.
“There was not a single doubt,” Reed said. “Even with 30 seconds left, no helmets were thrown, no one was getting upset.
“It was, ‘We’re gonna get this. This belongs to us. We’ve earned it. We’ve worked a year for it.’ And we got it.”
Sacramento-area CIF champions
(state finals began in 2006)
2008 — Grant, Open Division (14-0)
2010 — Folsom, Division II (14-0)
2012 — Granite Bay, Division I
2014 — Folsom, Division I-AA (16-0)
2015 — Del Oro, Division II-AA (8-6)
2015 — East Nicolaus, Division VI-AA
2017 — Folsom, Division I-AA (16-0)
2018 — Folsom, Division I-AA (14-1)
2018 — Rio Linda, Division V-AA (13-2)
2022 — Grant, Division III-AA (13-2)
This story was originally published December 11, 2022 at 12:57 AM.
