Grant-Folsom kicks off 2025 football season. Sacramento area sees coach changes
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- Grant and Folsom will open the 2025 season with a marquee matchup on Aug. 22.
- Davis High exits the Sierra Foothill League to play an independent football schedule.
- Justin Reber named interim head coach at Inderkum High after Reggie Harris resigns.
The calendar shows June, but it’s football season in one form or another with news, notes and happenings, even in the prep sports offseason.
A closer peek:
Folsom-Grant showdown opens 2025
Grant High School was The Sacramento Bee’s Team of the Decade for the 1990s and 2000s, punctuated by the CIF State Open Division championship in 2008.
Folsom was The Bee’s Team of the Decade for the 2010s, and has roared right through the current decade, stacking CIF Sac-Joaquin Section and other championships at a dizzying rate. Both schools have sent busloads of players to college and into the NFL ranks.
So, how about a titanic showdown of super powers to kick off the 2025 season?
It’ll happen Aug. 22 for a nonleague whopper in Del Paso Heights, home of the Grant Pacers.
The first meeting between the teams was in a 2010 opener, won by Grant, though Folsom exacted revenge in a section title payback rout, and the Bulldogs went on to win the first of five CIF State crowns.
Grant is coming off of a three-peat section championship march with two CIF State crowns, in 2022 and 2024, and the Pacers return a wealth of talent, including Bee All-Metro receivers Koby Shabazz and Zo Edwards.
Folsom has won four straight section titles, all in Division I, with a state title in 2023 and a Northern California finals berth in 2024.
The Bulldogs also return a bevy of stars, including 5-star quarterback Ryder Lyons.
Would ESPN carry Folsom-Grant?
There have been discussions between ESPN and Grant about the possibility of carrying the game on the cable giant, which may sound better in theory than in practice.
It’s important to remember that when Grant and Folsom kicked off the 2010 season, ESPN aired the game — and coaches, administrators and superintendents from both schools fumed at the inconvenience of the network calling all the shots, as The Sacramento Bee reported at the time.
This included ESPN producers taking student-athletes out of class for taped interviews, and also insisting Grant and Folsom use sponsored water jugs on their sideline and ESPN initially trying to limit media access before ESPN was overruled (ESPN wanted local media to sit in spots where half the field view was obstructed by bleachers).
Grant’s old press box at Rutherford Stadium is cramped with windows that do not open, and it would not have nearly enough room to house an ESPN crew. Folsom hosted the 2010 opener on ESPN, and Grant coaches aren’t willing to switch this game to accommodate ESPN.
The more reasonable route may be to have this game aired on the NFHS streaming network with local-based broadcaster Matthew Bessette of ABC JAM Productions, a gig he has spoken to Grant officials about.
Reber takes over at Inderkum
Reggie Harris has resigned as a physical education teacher and as head football coach at Inderkum of the Natomas Unified School District, and Justin Reber has been named interim coach for the 2025 season.
Reber was the Tigers’ offensive coordinator and is the school’s athletic director. He will continue in those roles. He disputed any speculation that he was behind any effort to replace Harris, who has told The Bee in the past that Reber is a bonus to the staff and not a threat.
“We’ll keep the train on the track and keep this thing going,” Reber said Thursday. “We all wish coach Harris the best.”
Inderkum had three playoff teams under Harris with Reber the play caller, including going 11-2 in 2023 and 9-3 in 2024.
Terry Stark sidelined
Terry Stark’s plans to coach the small-school Marysville Indians barely got off the ground.
The 230-game winning coach, most of that coming during his run at Inderkum, came to an end after spring drills with Marysville. His knee nearly gave out and swelled up like a balloon, prompting him to miss spring sessions, a first for a coaching lifer who starred at quarterback for Mira Loma in the late 1970s and had been a head coach since the early 1990s before he stepped away from Inderkum following the 2019 season.
The knee is bad enough that doctors have ordered up a knee-replacement procedure and urged him not to coach this fall. Stark had knee replacement surgery for his other knee a year ago.
Coaching change in Davis
Nick Garratt is out as the Davis Blue Devils head coach after three trying and difficult seasons in leading the Yolo County school, effective this week when the school elected not to renew his year-to-year coaching contract, though he will remain as a social studies teacher on campus.
Despite having nearly 3,000 students, Davis has struggled to field a competitive football team, leading to lower roster turnouts and seasons of 2-8 in 2022, 2-8 in 2023 and 1-9 in 2024.
In a letter to Davis administration first reported by Mike Bush of the Davis Enterprise, Garratt wrote, “You offered me the option of being fired or resigning. This letter is to communicate that it was not my intention to resign, but that I am now being forced to do so.”
Garratt also said in the letter that Davis needs to have a strength-training class to compete with programs that have one in place.
Davis athletic director Mark McGreevy expressed appreciation to Garratt and wrote in a letter to the Enterprise and to Davis parents that a coaching change was a decision that was “made after much deliberation and in the interest of strengthening the (Davis) football program...”
Davis goes independent
Davis invited the opportunity to move into the power-packed Sierra Foothill League before the 2024-25 academic year for all sports, except football, wherein parents especially voiced concerns over safety.
Davis has been a power in sports across the board, but the SFL football schedule was a stark reminder that the Blue Devils were in over their heads with rosters half the size of heavyweights such as Folsom, Oak Ridge, Granite Bay, Rocklin, Del Oro, Whitney and Jesuit.
In an effort to hold onto the football program, Davis administrators elected to bow out of the SFL for this sport and to play an independent schedule. This means Davis will not be part of a football league and will not be eligible for the CIF section playoffs as long as the program is not tied to a league.
Davis will play Pioneer of Woodland, Franklin of Elk Grove, River Valley of Yuba City, Foothill of Sacramento, Laguna Creek, Cordova, McClatchy, Johnson, Whitney and Del Oro.
The Whitney and Del Oro games will not count in league standings for Whitney and Del Oro.
This story was originally published June 12, 2025 at 1:36 PM.