‘It’s not fair’: Sacramento High has a great football team and area’s worst facilities
Justin Reber, driving a golf cart, zipped up to a visitor before a high school football game last month, hands gripping the wheel. He bore the expression of all-systems go, touchdowns on his mind, with distant visions of bleachers.
And he had fresh grass clippings stuck to his shoes.
“I’m not a groundskeeper,” Reber said with a laugh.
Actually, he is, and much more. Reber has the titles of athletic director and head varsity football coach at Sacramento Charter High School. He is also a counselor of sorts, imploring that academic effort match the football prowess. He is a father figure to players who don’t have fathers at home and who call teammates brothers.
On weeks the Dragons host games, Reber and a crew of assistant coaches spend Thursday afternoons grooming the grass football field on a campus nestled in the heart of Oak Park. Reber is also sure to add this line for emails he sends to opposing coaches and athletic directors preparing for a Sac High visit: “Don’t forget to bring lawn chairs.”
The reminder is because Sac High does not have bleachers — none for the home side or the visitor side. The field used to have bleacher seating, but time and weather beat those rickety units down, rendering them unsafe. So they came down. Reber’s phone line and email are open for any donations or any idea of how to raise funds to get seats so fans can catch a good show.
“Our kids deserve better,” Reber said, peering out across his field and a sea of lawn chairs.
Sac High fans standing or using a lawn chair bear long faces, but this is no sad-sack operation. It’s not some city school football outfit falling all over themselves. The Dragons are 3-0, playing inspired ball with a host of superb athletes, some generating scholarship attention at top universities. The Dragons are ranked No. 11 by The Bee, heading in a Capital Athletic League opener on Saturday against No. 12 Christian Brothers.
“We have a lot to play for,” Reber said. “We want people to see it and to have a seat.”
Dragons’ fire and flameouts
Sac High has had its up-and-down cycles since it began football play in the 1920s. It was a power in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, and it sent scores of players on scholarships to Pac-8 programs in the 1970s. The Dragons have also suffered mightily.
They endured 28-game losing streaks in the 1980s, reached the playoffs for the first time in 1992 under coach Tom Rutten, dipped again, then rose again under coaches Doug Cosbie and Paul Doherty. Sac High scored a major victory for every underdog when it toppled top-ranked Folsom in 2016 to halt the Bulldogs’ regional-record 48-game regular-season winning streak, elevating to Bee No. 1 status for the first time since the 1960s.
Reber was the coach for that 2016 team, then bounced to other programs seeking more challenges. He returned to Oak Park before the spring season, determined to finish the job. That job entails elevating the program and getting seats at the very least to match. This ambition will either further inspire the coach or burn him out.
“I’m ready to work, and I’ve been working,” Reber said.
‘We belong here’
Sac High used to play home games at Hughes Stadium on the campus of Sacramento City College, but that turned into a financial grind, given the high costs of venue rental and security.
The Dragons are determined to host games on campus. They no longer want to be nomads.
“We belong here, on this campus, and we’ll make it work,” said Sac High/St. Hope Head of Schools Kari Wehrly. “It’s a great school, great kids. We have so many good things happening here. We’ve had 94 percent of our kids go to four-year colleges, but we need better football facilities. It starts with an impact coach, and we have that in Coach Reber. He connects with the kids. They respond to him. We can have something very special in football here, and that helps the entire school.”
Sac High was founded in 1856 and opened on the 34th Street location in 1924. It is the second-oldest public school in California. For all the charm of old buildings with huge clocks seemingly out of an old movie set, the place shows its age.
That goes right on down to a field that doesn’t always have irrigation but does have an army of coaches mowing, weeding, clipping and cleaning. Those coaches will bring cans of spray paint to mark the white yard lines, to spruce up the logo at midfield. This isn’t a new situation. It’s been the norm for decades.
Almost every high school in the greater Sacramento region now has spiffy field turf, but the Dragons remain old school, left in the dust when it comes to facilities upgrades and maintenance.
“Sometimes, we get so tired lining the field that the lines look a little wobbly,” Reber said with a laugh.
Said Dragons junior varsity coach Derrick Stephens: “We are Sacramento, and the name of our school is the name of this city. We should have better facilities. We’re bringing the buzz back to Sac, and bleachers would be great. Shoot, sometimes the sprinklers don’t work. You don’t get to hear the water spray, or see the gloss of water drops on the grass. We have the look and feel of facilities neglect. It’s just not fair to the kids.”
Sac High won its last two games this season on the road, dipping into fundraising accounts to rent chartered buses. Reber didn’t want an army of car-poolers tooling down Highway 99 toward Stockton. The Dragons beat Ripon Christian 35-7 and McNair of Stockton 56-6.
“We had a great time on the buses, everyone spaced apart, masks on to follow COVID protocols, but we were together and we were happy,” Reber said. “We felt like a normal high school. We’re getting there.”
Sacramento is already there results-wise, though the image takes a beating. The Dragons played Stagg of Stockton in an opener this season, prevailing 28-21. Stagg coach Don Norton surveyed the field before kickoff and told The Bee he can relate to the challenges.
“That was us a few years ago,” Norton said. “We didn’t have any facilities, and when we didn’t, kids didn’t come out in large numbers and fans didn’t want to watch. But new facilities for us completely changed our program. I know Reber’s doing his best. I can relate. It’s not fair if people look at this field and seating and think it’s a lousy program or school, but that’s reality, and people judge a school and kids on how the field looks. Not fair.”
The Dragons to a man don’t seem to notice their shortcomings. How can one miss what they have not had? People attending Sac High games do grumble that the snack bar is really a fold-out table with snacks and drinks on top. But none of it has dulled the spirit of the players, who compete with a purpose and cause.
“We play for ourselves and our school,” Dragons running back Lamar Radcliffe said.
‘It hurts our image’
The Dragons don’t fret over what they cannot control. The football field is a Hail Mary toss away from the weathered baseball and softball fields. If this were a used car lot, people might be inclined to kick a tire and then hit the road.
“These fields, it hurts our image, what we don’t have, but the kids here are not affected by it,” Reber said. “That’s the best thing. A great group of kids. They’re a loyal group: loyal to their school, loyal to each other, loyal to their community, loyal to what they’re doing. They’re gritty, they’re tough, and they have a lot of adversity in their lives, so football and school are a safe haven here.”
The coach added with emotion: “We had two shootings near here this weekend, and one of my coaches was almost shot and killed. That’s something our kids and coaches live with. It’s sad, it’s scary that they have all this going through their minds walking home, but they have each other, and that’s everything. We appreciate every good thing we do have.”
A successful football program can help heal, can help raise awareness of the good on a campus.
“When a football program is successful, we can unite,” Reber said. “All that stuff that goes on in the streets can be silenced.”
Now the larger challenge beyond blocking and tackling: facilities.
The Dragons have been the forgotten metro school when it comes to sports facilities with no real answers. Sac High went to charter status in 2003 when it was decommissioned as a standard public school by the Sacramento City Unified School Board due to low academic scores. Sac High became a charter school — St. Hope — and that saved it from folding.
The girls’ and boys’ basketball programs have reached state-level success with a number of Sac-Joaquin Section championships, and they continue to play in one of the storied basketball venues in the region in the Dave Hotell Pavilion. There have been scores of academic achievers who played sports or who did not.
Sac High for decades was part of the Metro League, heavy on Sacramento City Unified School District programs. Those schools regularly used Hughes Stadium as a home venue before rising security and rental costs led to each opening home venues in the 1990s, including fields dotted with gopher holes and featuring jackrabbits racing across the 50 during touchdown marches.
But school-bonding measures in the last 10 years led to sparkling on-campus stadiums with lights at Burbank and Kennedy. Johnson and McClatchy don’t have stadium lights, but they do have spectacular on-campus field turfs and tracks, a significant upgrade over what they once had. McClatchy plays home games at Kennedy; Johnson hosts home games in the late afternoon on Fridays.
Reber, the Sac High coach, groundskeeper and keeper of the faith, knows all of this and has the look of facilities envy.
“In all my years in football, I know kids love to play at home, no matter how bad the field or seats look,” Reber said “We’ll get there.”