Bee’s Best prep football: No. 13 Whitney looks to use youth, skill to win games
The Sacramento Bee will unveil our Top 25 football rankings from No. 25 to No. 1, at least a team a weekday, right up to the Aug. 19 kickoff.
No. 13 Whitney
City: Rocklin
School opened: 2005
League: Sierra Foothill League
Division: l
Enrollment: 2,065
2021 record: 6-6
Coach: Zac McNally
Outlook: Looking at the Whitney High School football roster, you might notice a trend.
The Wildcats only have a handful of seniors on the roster and the team is mostly made up of sophomores and juniors. Whitney only returns five starters from last year’s team that went 6-6 and lost in the second round of the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs.
That shouldn’t be a reason to panic. There is excitement from head coach Zac McNally about what his team full of youth and inexperience can do this season.
“We have guys that rotated, but we only have four or five guys that started the entire year,” McNally said. “That’s why I’m really excited to see how we come together. There’s a lot of question marks but we have a lot of growing to do.”
Headlining that group of returning starters is junior quarterback Jacob Smiley. Smiley appeared in seven games last season and threw for a team-leading 665 yards with nine touchdowns.
He is expected to be fully unleashed as the starting quarterback this season.
“I’m really excited about him,” McNally said. “When he was healthy, he did some really productive things for us.”
Another key returner that is has gotten serious attention from Division l coaches is defensive back Phoenix Rose. He has verbal full-ride scholarship offers from Arizona, California Colorado, Portland State, Washington and Washington State. He had three interceptions last season as a sophomore and was on the varsity team as a freshman during the shortened spring season in 2021.
Other returning starters for Whitney are linebacker Jackson Jones and lineman Bryce Kilkenny.
McNally is also excited about the new players on the roster and the ones who didn’t get playing time last season. That includes Lincoln Fifer, Hayden Wilder, John Worden and Cole McCracken. Whitney also has versatile athlete Isaiah Bickham, who played last season at Sheldon.
Whitney opens the season Aug. 19 against Antelope, which they lost to the playoffs. The Wildcats also face Woodcreek, Clovis, Chico and Heritage before starting Sierra Foothill League play against Rocklin on Sept. 30.
“I learned that you want to have a preseason schedule when you look at it you go, ‘Wow this could go really good or really bad,’” McNally said. “You are going to learn a lot playing teams that have a tradition of going deep in the playoffs.”