From a scant six players to 35, Florin football program is growing
When Dan Davis greeted his football team for the first time on the South Sacramento campus seven days before the 2019 season, he was underwhelmed — and concerned.
The Florin High School football coach said hello to six players. No one was late. People didn’t get lost. This was the grand total of football players for the entire school. So Davis started to scour the campus for bodies and willing souls to give blocking and tackling a shot. He taught players how to put on shoulder pads. Some had never played a down of tackle football. He showed kids how to place their hands and feet when they block and others how to position themselves for a tackle.
Assistant coach John Davis, the early 1990s Elk Grove High star quarterback, found students tackling with glee on the field just for sport. He got them to try real football. Interest grew, as did the roster. The Panthers now have 35 varsity players, and now they seek another measure of success, such as a victory. They collectively approach this spring season as a chance to pick up some momentum, to score some touchdowns, to build for the fall season.
“I just want to see these kids smile,” said Dan Davis, a teacher in the Elk Grove Unified School District for 25 years who played in the trenches at Valley High, graduating n 1991. “They should be laughing and joking and enjoying life, and that wasn’t happening during the school shutdown and the pandemic. Out here, we can have fun in football while coming together in a team game. These kids have wanted success for a long time.”
Florin opened in 1989 and has sported just two winning football seasons and two playoff teams, none since 1996. The Panthers did not win a game on the field — there was one forfeit — in 2018 or 2019. The last on-field victory was at the end of a 4-6 campaign in 2017, beating Valley 18-16.
The spring opener against Johnson last Friday was canceled due to a COVID-19 positive test result from Johnson, so the wait continues. Florin plays McClatchy on Thursday night at Monterey Trail. The Panthers have talent in fullback/linebacker Farani Va’a, a 4.0 student, running back/linebacker Raymundo Diaz and quarterback Kavon Smith, who works Davis, a Sacramento Sheriff and Florin school resource officer who says, “Florin can become a good program. It’ll take work. We’ll get there.”
This story was originally published March 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.