Folsom tops Inderkum behind QB Ryder Lyons and defensive line. Up next: Rival Oak Ridge
Paul Doherty addressed it before the game on Friday night and then afterward with a light drizzle coming down on the Prairie City Stadium blue turf as his team huddled around him.
The Folsom High School football coach stressed that in order to keep this train rolling, the Bulldogs must clean up their act, or a season of promise will wind up in the ditch. Too many pre-snap penalties, dropped passes and turnovers — everything that derails championship hopes.
Top seeded and still standing, Folsom held off upstart No. 5-seeded Inderkum 36-29 in a thrilling if penalty-filled CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Division I semifinal, placing the program right back at Hughes Stadium next week for another shot at another title.
Unbeaten in section play this season, Folsom (10-2) will take on rival Oak Ridge, a 31-14 semifinal winner at Central Catholic of Modesto, with the aim to win the program’s 10th section banner since 2010 and 13th since 1989. Folsom has defeated Oak Ridge 20 consecutive times since 2006, including in last year’s section final and this fall to open Sierra Foothill League play.
“Not a good week of practice,” Doherty said before kickoff. “We’ve got to be better.”
Ryder Lyons had moments of greatness but also moments of looking human during a monstrous sophomore season, including two interceptions to Baron Taylor that he’d like to have back. But he otherwise stood out in a showdown of stellar section quarterbacks as Ricky Cole led Inderkum with a touchdown run and a 56-yard touchdown pass.
Lyons threw for 136 yards and had a 15-yard touchdown pass to Jameson Powell for a 36-19 lead with 8:53 to go, a play sure to resonate a long while. The stout 6-foot-3, 205-pound Lyons showed resolve on that play, taking a bad snap, scrambling backward, and, while getting crushed by two Tigers, fired a strike to the back of the end zone that Powell snatched. It was that sort of night.
Lyons is also a load when he runs it. He rushed 21 times for 183 yards and three touchdowns to give him 17 TDs on the season. He had a sizzling 80-yard bolt and 2-point conversion run for a 22-19 lead with just over 4 minutes to play in the third quarter, a lead that Folsom would not lose. Lyons would have finished with more than 200 yards rushing, but he took losses on two kneel downs to kill the clock at the end in halting Inderkum’s 11-game winning streak.
“Best player in the section, no doubt,” Doherty said. “He’s gotten better by the minute, by the quarter, by the game. He’s mature. He loves to run the ball, but we tell him to be a passer first, to look down field, but we do have designed runs for him. He’s a load.”
Folsom D makes stops
Folsom defensive coordinator Sam Cole was sure to be as thorough as he could in preparing for this one, digging into the game-film archives to study tendencies of Justin Reber, the Inderkum offensive coordinator. Reber was the Sacramento Dragons head coach in 2016 when his club beat Folsom in a nonleague game on the blue turf to halt the Bulldogs’ state-leading 48-game regular-season winning streak and Folsom’s regional-record 54-game streak against section competition.
Doherty was coaching Whitney in Placer County that season and called Reber that night to congratulate him.
“I coached a lot of those Sac High kids the previous year and loved them, and that was a big win,” Doherty said.
Cole said before Friday’s game: “I respect Reber that much to look at that 2016 game, to see some of those plays. I even looked at some of their 7-on-7 passing league games.”
Then Cole unleashed his guys to get after Cole and company. Folsom’s defense includes defensive linemen bruisers Lucas Hardeman, Theo Greule and Elijah Gulewich, and defensive back RJ Whitten. Folsom had four sacks and several other hurries.
“The defensive line has been great this season,” Doherty said. “Whitten is a football player. He can tackle, can run, can cover. He has a lot of football skills. The kid knows how to play football.”
Claxton leads Inderkum
Bryson Claxton led Inderkum with 131 yards rushing and opened the game with an 8-yard scoring run. Daymion Rivera rushed 17 times for 139 yards for Folsom, and his 12-yard score tied it at 7-7 with 6.4 seconds left in the first quarter.
Inderkum took a 16-14 lead after a Folsom punt snap went through the back of the end zone. Then the Tigers went up 19-14 on Nathan Bell’s 35-yard field goal.
Lyons answered by engineering three successive touchdown drives to seize control, and the Bulldogs were on their way. Folsom (10-2) has lost only to Northern California top-ranked Serra of San Mateo, which will again play in the CIF Open Division final, and De La Salle, which on Friday won its 31st consecutive North Coast Section championship. Serra beat Folsom 21-14 and DLS beat the Bulldogs 14-7.
“Those losses helped us,” Doherty said. “You can’t replicate what those guys at Serra and De La Salle do in practice. You have to play them.”
Inderkum finished 11-2, a remarkable showing for head coach Reggie Harris, a strong defense that included his star defensive back son Christian Harris, and an offense that returns a lot of players, including Cole, who finished with passed for 49 touchdowns and ran for 13.
This story was originally published November 17, 2023 at 11:05 PM.