Grant High’s football team pushes back on perceptions after parking lot shooting death
The Grant Pacers have a lot to discuss these days — football’s only one of them.
Players and coaches walk and talk proudly on their Del Paso Heights campus, a setting that looks like it has been plucked right out of the 1930. It has: Banners dotted across campus announce this academic year as Grant’s 90th celebration.
But while the campus hums with pride over a revitalized football team, there’s also a grimace at a longstanding problem: gun violence. A shooting in the Grant parking lot Friday night killed a man. One person has been arrested in connection with the parking lot fight that led to the shooting.
Inside the football stadium, few were aware of the fight or the shooting. The Pacers lost 49-42 to second-ranked Monterey Trail. The postgame scene was chaotic.
It came seven years after a shooting well away from the Grand Avenue campus took the life of a beloved Grant player J.J. Clavo. But the violence isn’t endemic to the school, players and coaches connected to the Grant program say. Friday’s shooting death was the 50th homicide in the city this year. The 49th came the day before, outside East Sacramento’s Sutter Lawn Tennis Club.
“The shooting here, it’s horrible, and our prayers are with the family,” Pacers assistant coach Elliot Leach said. “This is not a Del Paso Heights problem, or a Grant problem. Shootings are an American problem. There’s too much gun violence everywhere.”
Football unites Del Paso Heights
Around the Grant campus, a motto displayed on T-shirts or hand-painted posters is “Pacer4Life.” The buzz on campus also is the revival of its storied football program, and the sounds of the nationally recognized Grant drum line reverberating across campus.
Three years after going an uncharacteristic 1-9 and a year after stalling out at 0-9, the Pacers are rolling to their own drum beat again at 7-2. A return trip to the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs is assured. This is a program with tradition unlike any other, including 27 players reaching the NFL, easily the most for any local program.
Football has been played at Grant since the early days of the school, when players wore leather helmets and shells for padding. But the Pacers didn’t become a state-ranked powerhouse until 1991, when Mike Alberghini became head coach. Grant led the region in victories in the 1990s and the 2000s, and it produced powerhouse teams through 2014. Alberghini retired in 2020, having won a regional-record 282 games and eight section championships.
Parents don’t have to encourage their kids to get active in sports in Del Paso Heights. The kids crave it. Nothing united the region more than the football program. Friday games are a festive setting of young and old.
Said Grant coach Carl Reed, “Grant is always relevant. It means a lot to people here. Last year, we hit rock bottom in football. We’re not just winning on the field again but we’re winning off the field with study hall, good students, good grades. There are a lot of great things going on here. With all the diversity here, this is the real world with every walk of life. We always have a lot to represent and play for.”
That includes perception. It isn’t just Metro League opponents or those looming in the playoffs that Pacers brace for. They also fight an image problem.
“People on the outside think this is a ghetto, crazy school, but it’s not,” Pacers senior quarterback Joseph “Jojo” McCray said. “It’s a great school. I’m proud to say I go here. I talk about it with pride. We defend our school.”
Picking up the pieces
The shattered glass in the Grant parking lot has been swept up, leaving more questions than answers. A 24-year-old Sacramento man was struck by a bullet during a scrum involving as many as 20 people, Sacramento Police said. He was identified Monday as Alfred Ayodele Myah.
A firearm was recovered at the scene. Sacramento and Twin Rivers Unified police, as well as Grant officials, said none of those involved in the parking lot dispute were tied to Grant or the football program.
Neither team was aware of the shooting. The game was intense enough. There was no panic in the stands because no one heard the gunfire. Players and coaches who talked to The Sacramento Bee during practice this week said they weren’t aware of the police activity until they left the stadium to change clothes in the locker room.
“Weird and sad situation for all involved,” Monterey Trail coach T.J. Ewing said. “Feel bad for Grant. It was an awesome game that got smeared by a few people not involved in the event.”
The Twin Rivers District wrote in a statement, “We are absolutely devastated by the act of senseless gun violence that occurred, and we send our heartfelt condolences to the family mourning the loss of a loved one. It is essential to maintain a safe and secure environment for students, staff, families and community members. We wholeheartedly believe that the most important thing that all of us can do right now is to build a stronger sense of community in order to provide a safe environment for all. This is something we must work harder on, together.”
That sense of community will be on display Friday at the regular-season finale at home against Laguna Creek. The game will not be moved out of Del Paso Heights, the schools confirmed. Laguna Creek athletic director Jon Ussery said the Elk Grove Unified School District and Twin Rivers officials are working on ensuring that there will be ample security for Friday’s game.
Still, he said Laguna Creek parents have reached out to him expressing concern. At Grant, home fans use one parking lot behind the press box and home stands, and the visiting team have their own lot.
Said Ussery, “The most important thing is the safety of everyone on both sides.”
Gunfire has become too familiar
Gunfire has jolted Grant seasons before. In 1996, during an early season game against visiting Hiram Johnson, an adult male peeled his car out of the Grant parking lot, firing a shot into the air upon his exit. No one was hurt.
League opponents declined to play night games at Grant and demanded all Grant football games be played on the road. Grant instead played home games on Saturday afternoons. Pacers coaches and players took that personally, taking it as an unfair slight to their program. Grant went on to win the section championship.
By the early 2000s, Grant was back to Friday night games, and Pacers games again became a social epicenter for North Sacramento. By 2008, the city was in full support of the Pacers when they became the region’s only team to play for and win the prestigious CIF State Open Division championship, leading to parades in Sacramento. The Pacers were hailed as heroes.
In 2015, hours before a playoff football opener, Clavo, the popular Grant senior, was shot in his car a mile away from campus while on a food run with teammates. A teammate was also struck but survived. A third teammate was able to drive the blood-soaked car back to campus, where players said they felt safe. Clavo died in the arms of Alberghini, the Pacers’ famed coach whom the school stadium is named after.
Days later, when the season resumed, Sacramento area football programs backed the Pacers in a moving moment of unity and support. Players and coaches from 50 regional schools lined the Grant field, in their own school colors, for a moment of silence before kickoff. That setting reduced Clavo’s mother, Nicole, to tears. It was an example of the impact Grant has on the football community.
Players and coach leave other programs to join Grant
What sustains Grant football over the decades are the coaches and players. The roster is dotted with players whose brothers, cousins, uncles or fathers once suited up for the Pacers. Often, players return to Grant to coach. Some also become teachers on campus.
They give back to a program that gave so much to them, including Devan Cunningham, who played at Fresno State, and Syd Thompson, who starred at Cal and reached the NFL.
His brother, Shaq Thompson, was a Grant star who was a first-round pick of the Carolina Panthers, where he remains a starter at linebacker and has been nominated by teammates for NFL Man of the Year honors for his community impact in Sacramento and in Charlotte.
The alumni list also includes head coach Reed. His father, Lynn Reed, was a Grant athlete in the 1970s who coached and taught for decades. Carl Reed is a busy man. He also teaches computer science on campus and is the school’s athletic director. The football team isn’t the only one achieving. The boys basketball program under coach Deonard Wilson has won the last two section Division II championships.
Grant’s enrollment is robust at just under 2,100 students. Grant games are a must-do for students.
“People love to come to games here, and they’re fun,” said McCray, the quarterback.
No perceived image of a tough school prevented McCray from enrolling at Grant before his sophomore season. McCray grew up in Rio Linda. He joked that he doesn’t look like a lot of his Pacers teammates, pointing to his shock of blond hair that he ties into a bun to tuck into his helmet. He endured the 0-9 season of 2021 and has grown into a college prospect at 6-foot-2 with a rocket arm and a fleet of fast receivers.
“I’m the white quarterback,” McCray said with a laugh, reminding that Grant’s roster includes a lot of Black and Polynesian athletes. “But everyone welcomed me. It’s a big family here. I wanted to come here. Couldn’t wait to play here. Coach Reed and the coaches have weekly grade checks. We do study hall. We break down film. We’re held accountable. That’s why we’re winning.”
Grant has much more than just McCray. Lineman Alani Noa, all 6-foot-4 and 340 pounds of him, has given a verbal commitment to play on scholarship at USC. Kingston Lopa, a 6-4 junior receiver/safety, has drawn national recruiting interest from Auburn, LSU, USC and others. Others getting recruited include receiver/defensive back Dubee Lopa and receiver Kyrell Goss-Pruitt.
Coach Reed burdened the load of leadership, first replacing a legend in Alberghini, and then enduring the heat of the lost 2021 campaign. Grant’s football community backs its players, but not always the coaches, and that included Alberghini. He produced 12-1 seasons and withstood the howls of community members pleading for his termination.
“Oh, fans let me know how they felt last year,” Reed said, allowing a laugh. “The community is proud but they’re on our backs, too. I can’t say enough about the coaching staff and the kids. They got this right again. Coach Al was Grant. We’re a program. Not one guy. It’s not one coach or player. It’s not Carl Reed. It’s a program.”
‘It feels good here ...’
There has long been this shared belief among area coaches that Sacramento football is better when Grant is a factor. Like now. Grant is proof that city schools can achieve in an era where the affluent programs in Placer County or at Folsom or in El Dorado Hills tower over the rest.
A 1989 Grant graduate, assistant coach Leach beams in recalling that this is the campus in which he met his future wife, Ayanna.
“You walk these halls and it means something, and it feels important,” Leach said. “There’s a guy who graduated from here in 1947 with the alumni who still talks about the Pacers. It doesn’t matter if you’re the class of ‘47 or ‘21 — you’re a Pacer for life.”
The coach added, “It means something to play Grant, win or lose. Monterey Trail is ranked second in the city but it meant something for them to beat us. We’re proud of that. Our brand is still there. We have kids in our youth programs here who can’t wait to be Grant Pacers.”
Grant’s offensive coordinator is Josiah Johnson. He grew up in Oak Park, which has had its share of gun violence over the years that has unfairly overshadowed the achievements at Sacramento High School. He coached last season at Folsom High.
“I wanted to be with kids who had similar backgrounds as me,” Johnson said. “It feels good to be here. It feels right.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2022 at 5:00 AM.