Prep football: Notre Dame recruit Rico Flores reflects as Folsom wins another league title
Star receiver Rico Flores has helped the Folsom Bulldogs win a lot of games, including during last season’s run to a Northern California I-AA championship. The four-star recruit committed in July to Notre Dame, where he’ll play football next fall, but one thing was missing from his high school resume.
“This senior class, the Rico Flores class, they hadn’t won a league championship,” Folsom coach Paul Doherty noted Thursday night.
Flores and the Bulldogs checked that box Thursday with a 14-7 win over rival Rocklin to give them their seventh Sierra Football League championship since 2014.
It came after Rocklin dealt Folsom a 40-7 defeat last year. Then the Bulldogs lost a second league game to Granite Bay, leading to finishing third in the SFL before their inspiring run to the NorCal title.
This season, Folsom is a candidate to earn the No. 1 seed in the Division I section playoffs after finishing 9-1 overall and a perfect 5-0 in league.
It’s a fitting end to Flores’ senior year. His first campaign on varsity, as a sophomore, was wiped out because of the pandemic, and while there were games played in the spring of 2021, no official league champion was crowned. Flores on Thursday helped his team and senior class clinch its first league title on Senior Night at Prairie City Stadium with a handful of catches and a presence that helped create opportunities for teammates.
Flores took a moment to reflect on his journey knowing playoffs are ahead — and major college football awaits in 2023.
“I’ve grown to fight adversity,” he told the Bee. “You never can get comfortable. I’ve learned that throughout the four years of high school so far. I feel like football has a lot to do with life, it’s how you handle yourself on the field and off the field will make who you are.”
Said Doherty: “I love that kid. Just the energy, the life (he has), a kid who takes himself seriously. He has goals, he has ambitions. I always tell these kid, ‘It’s cool, you can have friends, just have friends on the move.’ Like you’re walking, ‘I gotta go to practice, I gotta go to the weight room, I gotta go to class, I gotta go to college. You can come with me but I’m going somewhere.’ And he’s been that for us.”
Flores made a key 20-yard catch after junior quarterback Austin Mack escaped the pocket and found his favorite target along the left sideline. Flores weaved through the Rocklin defense to the 10-yard line, leading to running back Greco Carillo’s 10-yard receiving score that broke the scoreless stalemate in the third quarter.
Junior running back Abram Woodson added a 7-yard touchdown run in the fourth to give the Bulldogs a 14-0 advantage. Rocklin avoided the shutout with a long touchdown pass from Joey Roberts to junior tight end Gavin Correia with just over a minute remaining, but Folsom recovered the ensuing onside kick and salted the game away with kneel-downs.
Doherty admitted after the game it wasn’t the cleanest performance from his team. That’s hardly surprising given Folsom clinched a share of the league crown with last week’s 55-27 victory over Granite Bay. This week’s game landed on a Thursday after a short week and the playoffs begin in two weeks, following a first-week bye as one of the top seeds.
“It means something. It’s the league championship,” Doherty said. “It gives us the best chance at being the best possible seed. We hope it’s the one seed. If not, we gotta go prove it. I think these kids have been doing it all year, so they’ll keep doing it.”
Folsom will try to make a run with first-year starting quarterback Mack, a 6-foot-5 junior who has already received Division I offers from a slew of schools on the West Coast, including Stanford.
Mack came into Thursday’s game with 2,306 passing yards and 30 touchdown throws to just two interceptions in nine games. He was steady on Thursday in a game that turned out to be a defensive slugfest.
“I think everybody expects this meteoric rise. And from one perspective, maybe you saw that,” Doherty said of Mack. “But for us it was just steady improvement every week. And I think his best football’s still ahead of him and I think in two weeks he’ll play better than he did. He played pretty well tonight in a game that was kind of flat offensively. He still produced and did enough for us to win.”
Flores saw his numbers jump slightly as a senior. Before Thursday, he averaged 94 receiving yards per game — up from 77 last season. His connection with Mack will be vital if Folsom is going to make a repeat run through the NorCal playoffs.
“He’s doing real great,” Flores said of Mack. “He’s just grown a lot as a man, and I know he’s going to keep continuing. He’s only a junior, he’s still got a whole other year left. And just with us, seniors, being his role model and keeping him up, keeping him uplifted, I know that plays a big part in his life for sure.”
