Prep football: Grant back in the playoffs, Mayor Steinberg offers support after shooting
Last week’s shooting in a Grant High School parking lot just outside of the football stadium during a game between Grant and Monterey Trail continued to cast its shadow Friday night.
But you wouldn’t know it based on how the Pacers celebrated a win over Laguna Creek and the program’s rise back to prominence.
“This is our temple,” Grant head coach Carl Reed told the Bee after his team’s 54-21 win to cap a 7-2 regular season. “We know this is our community hub, this is us. Outside noise, it doesn’t effect us. We knew it happened. We knew it wasn’t this school, it wasn’t anything like that. We’re here.”
There was an enhanced police presence at Friday night’s game and in the surrounding parking lots after a disturbance involving roughly 20 people led to the shooting death of 24-year-old Ayodele Myah last week. The Twin Rivers School District required fans to walk through a metal detector before entering Friday’s game, though authorities said the incident didn’t involve any students at Grant or anyone affiliated with the football program.
Which led to Friday’s regular season finale looking much like business as usual. Though there was an obvious exception: Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg appeared at the game wearing a Grant “Pacers4Life” sweatshirt in support of the home team.
“The Pacer history and tradition is so rich and so special,” Steinberg told The Bee. “And there obviously have been some real challenges. Obviously what occurred last week was a tragedy. But my message is that we need to keep coming out and we need to support this community.”
Steinberg continued to push for “sane gun laws” while noting, “there’s just too many weapons that are out there that are for nothing but injuring and killing innocent people.”
On the field, Grant beat Laguna Creek soundly, jumping ahead 40-13 by halftime, leading to a running clock for most of the second half. Senior quarterback Joseph McCray had five rushing touchdowns and threw another to standout receiver Kyrell Goss-Pruitt, who had the attention of at least one college scout from a Big Sky school in attendance.
Running back Denarie Merritt also scored a touchdown while the Pacers sat a number of key players ahead of their return to the playoffs after going 0-9 last season.
Reed and many around the Grant program called this season “The Rebirth,” which included changing the culture to emulate when the Pacers were a regional power and one of the winningest programs in Sacramento.
“The changes were (about) buy-in,” Reed said. “Coming every day, knowing the coaches are going to be here. I think once the kids knew we were going to be locked in, they were going to be locked in with us.
“So that’s why I can’t give enough credit to this coaching staff. Because they were every day in workouts, all the time, in summer, we were here locked in. And those kids knew if we were here they were going to believe — and when they believe, they knew. It came down to them. We interviewed them last year, (asking) ‘What was wrong?’ And they told us. They said, ‘Alright, we’re going to give it to you.’ And this was the result they gave us.”
Reed and the Pacers will find out their playoff fate Sunday afternoon when the Sac-Joaquin Section announces its playoff seeding. They’ll likely play in the Division III bracket.
This story was originally published October 29, 2022 at 4:39 AM.
