Win or lose in finals, it’s send-off celebration time for Folsom, Sutter, Winters
This is send-off season for the three remaining Sacramento-area high school football teams that extended seasons to the final weekend.
The CIF State Football Championships will be held at three Southern California venues on Friday and Saturday. The Folsom Bulldogs and Sutter Huskies on Thursday morning and the Winters Warriors on Friday morning shared the same appreciation and enthusiasm of leaving the cold and fog of the Sacramento Valley for the sunshine of Orange County where temperatures are forecasted in the 70s.
And win or lose, players, coaches and families expect to invade nearby Disneyland in Anaheim. Restaurants in Folsom, Sutter and Winters will carry the championship games on the streaming NFHS Network, as fans decked in school colors will shout at large television screens to cheer on their champions.
It’s a big deal for small-town schools to reach this stage, the grandest one there is at the prep level. Large-enrollment Folsom — with the backing of its ever-growing city of more than 92,000 people — is in its seventh CIF state final since 2010, but these are unchartered waters for Sutter and Winters.
Those small-enrollment schools are nestled in towns that carry the same as their schools have been football powerhouse programs since the 1970s. The trophy cases on both campuses are reflective of gridiron success, the schools combining for 24 section football championships. Sutter and Winters are in a state final for the first time, an event that started in 2006, and the achievement has revved up campuses and communities.
In Sutter County early Thursday morning, the Sutter Huskies loaded into two team buses and were given a police escort all the way through nearby Yuba City, a send-off with honking horns, air horns, whistles, flags and a sea of happy faces. Sutter (13-1) plays Barstow (11-3) of San Bernardino County, winner of 11 consecutive games, for the Division 4-AA title at 8 p.m. Friday at Buena Park High School in Orange County.
“We had a huge send-off this morning — the whole town was there,” Sutter coach Ryan Reynolds said. “It was huge and very special to see that Sutter is a special place, a very unique community that has a ton of pride and spirit. We don’t take any of this for granted.
Folsom hits the air
Folsom players and coaches flew to Orange County on Thursday, with a police escort for the two team buses to get out of town. Parents, students and community members used cellphones to film the departing players, and players filmed them right back.
Folsom coach Paul Doherty and his staff herded Bulldogs through the airport, a sea of blue invading the security check point with a fire drill of everyone placing laptops, shoes and belts onto the conveyor belt in quick order.
The Folsom team will cap the afternoon with a walk-through practice in Southern California, have a team dinner and then put on the final touches of preparation for the Division 1-AA title game against Santa Margarita on Friday night at 8 p.m. at Saddleback College.
Ever the team guy, Pat Doherty, father of the coach, led the get-out-of-town charge. A program father of sorts who helps set up and take down things on the field before and after games, Pat Doherty beat everyone to the trek to Southern California.
Pat “is driving the U-Haul full of gear. He left this morning,” according to Coach Doherty, who was in good spirits.
Winters football is bigger than town tractor parade
In Yolo County on Friday morning, team buses for Winters will head to Buena Park High for a 3 p.m. Saturday clash against Morse of San Diego for the Division 6-A crown. This is the biggest deal to hit Winters since at least last week when the annual tractor parade rolled downtown.
This event tops it.
“We missed the tractor parade last week because we were (playing for a Northern California championship), and I’ll gladly miss it every year if we’re still playing games,” said Winters coach Daniel Ward with a laugh. Ward grew up in Winters, starred at quarterback at the school in the late 1990s and has led a championship program for more than 15 years.
“The send-off will be the coolest thing in the world,” Ward said. “We’ll go by all the schools in town, and it’s emotional just talking about it. We’ll have a police and fire escort, drive by the district office and the big parking lot on the way out of town where there will be a crane with a Winters football flag.”
The coach added, “None of us will forget this. Everyone in town is making signs for the send-off.”
Ward’s challenge now isn’t just how to deal with the speed of the Barstow Aztecs of the CIF Southern Section. There are logistics that all CIF State coaches are dealing with - securing a walk-through practice venue, finding a spot for a team dinner, and reminding a pack of teenage football players that yanking the fire alarm inside the team hotel or doing cannonball dives into the pool in the middle of the night will not be tolerated.
Oh, and what to wear. Winters won its NorCal game against Minarets of O’Neils, near Yosemite, in dense fog so thick that players on one sideline could not see the other sideline. There will be no such issues in Orange County with sunshine.
“It’s been so cold for so long, that in figuring out what to pack was interesting,” Ward said. “Do I bring sweat shirts, pants, pull-overs? But if it’s 75 degrees, do we go with shorts?”
A good kind of stress.
Ward and the Warriors will watch Sutter play for its championship on Friday night. Winters and Sutter were decades-long rivals when they competed in the same league and section. The coaches have known each other for 20 years.
“When you get to this point, everyone starts rooting for you,” Ward said. “Dixon High is our biggest rival, and we haven’t played or practiced on real turf since a summer football camp. It’s been all grass, every game. Now we’ll be on turf (on Saturday). So we’ve used a facility in Dixon that has field turf, located on Christmas tree farm, and we practiced with Christmas music blaring. How cool is that?”
The three young children of coach Ward and wife Rikki are as excited to head south as the players. The sons, Declan and Kellen, are into football as Winters ball boys. Three-year-old Madison is more into pom-poms and cheer, and she has her eyes fixed on another big draw in Orange County.
“My sons wake up thinking football all week and my daughter wakes up thinking Disneyland,” Ward said. “Win or lose, we are going to Disneyland. What a way to end the season.”
