High school football: Folsom’s time has come (again). The Bulldogs want a state title
The coach is so hoarse of voice that you have to lean in to hear what Paul Doherty is saying.
He’ll heal the vocals once football season ends.
And the end is in view. Doherty is the coach of the Folsom Bulldogs, who have again risen to the top of the regional football mountain after an early exit in the 2019 playoffs and no 2020 postseason. Doherty’s players, for all their youthful ambition and teenage motors, are collectively a bit weary, but to a man, the Bulldogs insist they have plenty left in the tank to cap this season.
Folsom (11-3) faces San Diego’s Cathedral Catholic (11-2) Friday night in the final contest of a roller-coaster of a season for the CIF State Division I-AA championship. The game will be televised on NBC Sports Bay Area, the station that carries Kings and Warriors games.
The game will be played at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo in Orange County.
“I hope we’re healthy enough to limp into another week,” Doherty said. “One day at a time. We’ll come up with a plan. We’ll be ready.”
Folsom has to be ready because no one slows up for the opposition. The Bulldogs are battle-tested. They have run the gamut this season, storming to a 6-0 start, then getting leveled in by De La Salle in a nonleague meeting of Northern California heavyweights. The next week, Rocklin halted an 11-year Bulldogs league winning streak. Then there was a regular season-ending loss to Granite Bay.
But the playoffs brought new life. In the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs, Folsom went 3-0, capped by a payback 20-3 win over Rocklin in the Division I finals. Then the Bulldogs got more payback, beating De La Salle in Concord for the NorCal Division I-AA championship. Folsom halted an 0-20 losing streak for all regional teams against De La Salle since 2012, including the Bulldogs’ own 0-5 showing versus the Spartans. Beating De La Salle 28-27 denied the Spartans their 15th consecutive trip to a CIF state final, a record run.
Now Folsom aims to add more trophies to the collection. The Bulldogs are 4-0 in CIF state finals since 2010.
The 2014 Folsom team went 16-0, with 16 running clocks, en route to a CIF state crown. That team blasted past Cathedral Catholic 55-10 in a regular-season game, prompting coaches there to say that Folsom team was the best prep outfit they had seen. The 2018 CIF finals marked the final game for Folsom coach Kris Richardson, who soon left to become assistant head coach at Sacramento State with head coach Troy Taylor, his co-coach for earlier state-title wins at Folsom.
Doherty acknowledged the coaches who set the stage for his success this season after the De La Salle victory. A San Francisco native, Doherty coached his tail off at Sacramento High last decade, picking up paper cups and ankle tape in the locker room before spirited practices and a 2013 section Division III title game appearance, the best season in school history.
He then coached a spell at Whitney High in the Sierra Foothill League before that ended agonizingly when the section ruled his program had used handheld pads for drills outside the allowed window. Doherty was crushed, but blamed no one but himself. He kept his sanity by accepting the invitation of the Folsom coaches to come to practices, to games, to evaluate, to study, to heal. He did all of that.
Doherty then implemented his nationally recognized strength and conditioning program into the Bulldogs’ mix as Folsom repeated as CIF State champions in 2018, and he became the logical choice for Folsom principal Howard Cadenhead to succeed Richardson before the 2019 season. The only way to replace coaching legends is to become one yourself in quick order. Doherty takes none of it for granted. He knows how fleeting the good football life can be. Coaches are always one loss away from facing venom.
“I wore out my welcome by watching those guys coach,” Doherty said of Richardson and Taylor. “I was in the booth on Friday nights to learn everything I could. I learned everything about coaching high school football from those guys. I’m proud to represent Folsom. I’m incredibly proud of these kids and to be their coach.”
How the Bulldogs got good and then great
Folsom first rose to power in 1962 under coach Dewey Guerra, reaching No. 1 in the final NorCal rankings that fall. Tom Doherty, no relation to Paul Doherty, took over as head coach in 1981, and by the end of the decade, he transformed small-school Folsom into a growing-fast power, winning a Division-III section title in 1989 and a Division-II section in 1990.
Athletic director Tom Doherty brought in Richardson and Taylor to teach and coach and became their biggest backers as they elevated the program. Those coaches ditched the power game for a spread offensive attack, and then it all took off. Paul Doherty inherited all manner of great expectations, and his first team in 2019 was derailed by Monterey Trail in the playoffs.
Doherty entered this season with the top-ranked team in the area but reminded his players, “We haven’t accomplished anything yet.”
They have now, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by his old coaching pals Richardson and Taylor. They watched the Folsom win at De La Salle. Said Richardson, “We’ve been following along. Proud of Paul. Great coach, great guy.”
It takes everyone to get here
The Bulldogs are back in a final, thanks to a core of players who grew up playing in the Folsom youth programs, including brothers Tyler and Josh Tremain. Tyler is the gritty quarterback who is 16-1 as a varsity starter and scored four touchdowns in the DLS victory. Josh is an energized linebacker who heads that unit.
There are national recruits dotting the Folsom roster in tight end Walker Lyons and receiver Rico Flores Jr., and there are so many unsung grinders that you lose track without a roster. Some include kicker Jake Tremain, whose booming kickoffs at De La Salle denied the speedy Spartans any returns. Or there’s D.J. Brown, whose late interception at De La Salle helped allow all of this to happen. Or runners Toure Hendrick and Donovan Maxey-Parler, who compliment Tremain’s offensive mastery. Or tight end/defensive end Mason Norberg. Or the linemen on both sides, or stoppers such as Justin Eklund. It takes everyone.
And it’ll take all hands on defense to deal with Cathedral Catholic, which won the Southern California Regional final with a hard-to-fathom 72-63 victory over Orange in the highest-scoring regional or state final since they started in 2006. Lucky Sutton set a San Diego Section record with 435 rushing yards on 27 carries and six touchdowns to batter Orange.
Doherty was moved that so many alums attended the De La Salle NorCal game. They mobbed him afterward. Some will attend the game in Mission Viejo to see this journey to the finish.
“It’s incredibly rewarding,” the coach said. “A real genuine high school experience. Our past players were here. Daniyel Ngata is here. Love that kid. Ari Patu was here. Caleb Freelund was here. C.J. Hutton is here. All of these alumni are here because it matters and it means something.”
He added about clearing the DLS mountain, “Ton of respect for how they’d done it and there’s no one better. That’s what makes this so special. It’s a gamble and a risk when you play the best, and it hurts to lose badly. It almost cost us to play them. We were banged up. Almost lost the season.”
The season has one game left, the biggest game. Bigger than De La Salle 1 and De La Salle 2. Bigger than Rocklin 1 and Rocklin 2. The biggest games in all of their young lives, and the coach, too. They can’t wait.
This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.