CIF State Finals: Folsom, Sutter, Winters play on, and The Bee’s final Top 20
The last high school football games of the season are this weekend in Southern California, with sunshine in the forecast to match the ambition of teams competing for CIF State championships.
Three Sacramento-area teams remain in the hunt: the large-school powerhouse Folsom Bulldogs and small-school heavies in the Sutter Huskies in Sutter County and the Winters Warriors of Yolo County.
The CIF Sac-Joaquin Section that stretches from Yuba City, Grass Valley, Garden Valley and Fairfield down through the southern tip of Merced County will have additional teams in the CIF finals, too. They are the St. Mary’s Rams of Stockton, a team that has provided a feel-good sense in the wake of the recent birthday shooting tragedy in the city, the Sonora Wildcats of Tuolumne County and the Calaveras Red Hawks of San Andreas.
Coaches in the finals aim to pull all the stops. There is no tomorrow, except for the postseason banquet that will feel a great deal better if there is another championship to celebrate.
Sonora coach Kirk Clifton was blunt in his assessment of his small-school football program improving to 15-0 with a 41-14 rout of larger-enrollment Woodcreek of Roseville in the CIF Northern California Division 2-A title game on Saturday night. Physicality was the theme then and smash-mouth ball will be the motto until the final whistle this weekend when Sonora takes on 15-0 Rio Hondo Prep of Arcadia in Los Angeles County on Saturday morning at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo.
Clifton told Jordan Georgeson of Gold Country Media of his school’s theme of Mountain Misery, saying, “We knew that they hadn’t been hit really hard pretty much all year. It’s not flag football, it’s not 7-on-7. It’s real football out here.”
It’s real football at Folsom, Sutter and Winters, too.
Folsom backup QB stars
There was genuine and real curiosity on how Folsom would respond after losing star quarterback Ryder Lyons to a crushing hit late in the third quarter Friday against unbeaten Bay Area bruiser Riordan.
Folsom trailed by 10 when Lyons went down and then hopped up and hustled off the Prairie City Stadium home turf with a shoulder injury that may sideline him this week. By the time superb backup Brody Rudnicki was finished working over the defense with his big moment on the stage, the Bulldogs capped a dramatic 42-38 home victory over Riordan of San Francisco in the NorCal Division 1-AA title game.
Rudnicki, a junior, keyed the rally, firing two touchdown passes as his defense pitched a second-half shutout.
Now Folsom (13-1) aims to improve to 6-1 in CIF State games since 2010. The Bulldogs play Southern California Division 1-AA champion and San Diego powerhouse Cathedral Catholic (11-2) on Friday night at 8 p.m. at Saddleback in the second highest-classification game on the CIF State menu.
The grand finale of the CIF state weekend is the prestigious CIF State Open final between Northern California top-ranked De La Salle (12-0) of Contra Costa County and Santa Margarita (10-3) of Orange County on Saturday night. Click here for complete CIF brackets, ticket information and what games are televised/streamed.
Road-warrior Sutter
Sutter traveled 5 hours to Humboldt County, a tidy trek of some 265 miles, to win a NorCal title, and now the storied Huskies will head south to Buena Park High School Stadium in Orange County. That’s a nifty 453-mile trek and some 8 hours of bus driving.
There are no complaints from these Huskies.
“We’ll go anywhere,” Sutter coach Ryan Reynolds said.
All told, four weeks of playoff action will add up to 1,758 total miles and memories for a lifetime. Sutter (13-1) will play Barstow (11-3) of San Bernardino for the CIF State Division 4-AA title game on Friday night at 8 p.m.
Winters rolls on
Winters played an unknown in the Minaret Mustangs of O’Neals, near Yosemite, and prevailed in the CIF NorCal 6-A game 26-12 in fog so dense players from one sideline could not see those on the other sideline.
The Warriors (13-1) now play another unknown in the Morse Tigers (10-4) of San Diego on Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. at Buena Park High School Stadium, where fog will not be a concern.
Winners of 12 Northern Section championships and multiple small-school state No. 1 rankings well before the start of the CIF State playoffs in 2006, Winters is in uncharted territory as a first-time NorCal winner.
“What this means to our program and our community, words cannot express,” Winters coach Daniel Ward said after the Minarets game.
All-Metro plea: Sacramento-area football coaches are encouraged to submit Sacramento Bee All-Metro nominations by email to jdavidson@sacbee.com by Dec. 13. The Bee also requests copies of regional All-League teams to assure publication.
THE BEE’S FINAL TOP 20
1. Folsom (13-1)
2. Oak Ridge (9-4)
3. Grant (7-5)
4. Granite Bay (9-4)
5. Rocklin (6-6)
6. Del Oro (7-4)
7. Woodcreek (12-2)
8. Roseville (11-3)
9. Twelve Bridges (11-1)
10. Jesuit (6-5)
11. Sutter (13-1)
12. Inderkum (9-2)
13. Monterey Trail (9-3)
14. Casa Roble (11-2)
15. Rio Americano (7-5)
16. Vacaville (8-3)
17. Liberty Ranch (11-1)
18. Winters (13-1)
19. Bradshaw Christian (9-3)
20. Woodland Christian (9-2)
Bubble: Franklin (8-3), Placer (6-5), Lincoln (9-2), West Park (6-5), Destiny Christian (5-6), Pioneer (7-4), Sacramento (7-4), Rosemont (6-5), Laguna Creek (5-6), Yuba City (5-6).
This story was originally published December 8, 2025 at 3:06 PM.