Granite Bay football team prepares for a season that’s ‘times 1,000 of a challenge’
Jeff Evans is soaking in the odd spring football season.
The Granite Bay High School football coach thought for a moment during a recent practice about the journey to get to this point. Last month, the prep football season in California was in doubt. It no longer is, allowing for a spring season to kick off Friday.
Even during a normal season, there is a lot of planning before the first kickoff. Now those challenges are magnified. Granite Bay staffers last week marked dots in between football stadium bleachers to encourage social distancing at games. Granite Bay opens the season against rival Del Oro on Friday. Each player will be able to have four immediate family members in attendance.
“We’re excited (for the season), like most people are,” Evans said. “I’m relieved that they finally gave us the go. The overwhelming feeling I’ve gotten from coaches is we appreciate the opportunity because it’s a tremendous amount of work to put on a football game or season in any year. This year has been times 1,000 of a challenge. I know our state people and administration get a lot of bad raps, but the amount of work they’ve done to allow us to play a season — we are really appreciative.”
Evans added, “The fact is that our country and our world has been through so much. To even be able to have your mom and dad, let alone brother and sister (at the games) is a privilege. It’s not a right. It’s something that you shouldn’t take for granted. We get to do this. Even at practice, these guys are enjoying it, because they know full well, six months ago, and it could be six months from now we could be in a whole different spot. These guys are fired up.”
Evans has his youngest team with 15 sophomores on the varsity roster. There is no junior varsity team this spring, due to low participation numbers. The Grizzlies’ senior class is strong led by quarterback Nicholas Poulos, running back Cole Roth, lineman Ben Newman, tight end Ryan Wenstrom, kicker Justin Sampson and defensive backs Christian Perry, Talsen Smith and Caymen Stevens.
It doesn’t matter to Evans that there won’t be a postseason this spring.
“It’s a nice change of pace and it’s refreshing,” Evans said. “It goes back to the love of the game. There are so many stresses in this sport and we place them among ourselves with our kids. These guys are out here and at all the other schools because they want to play and they love football. The icing on the cake is the experience for us.”