In one respect, defending NorCal D1-AA champ St. Mary’s of Stockton already looks more dangerous than last year after the Rams exploded for 31 points in the second quarter in their 41-13 victory on Saturday at home against Serra of San Mateo.
State Top 25 Weekend Scoreboard: Preview Next Rankings Here
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Cal-Hi Sports Insider Blog
Quick-hitting, behind-the-scenes news and notes from the CalHiSports.com staff, including previews of upcoming content and events.
What We Learned: St. Mary’s-Serra
What We Learned: Manteca-VC
Showing speed and big play capabilities at the receiver position makes Buffaloes a stronger threat to go far in a D2 CIF state bowl game division than previously thought. Valley Christian’s comeback in second half of 22-20 game it lost on a missed field goal also is a good sign.
State Top 25 Weekend Scoreboard: Preview Next Rankings Here
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5th Year With FOX 40 Final Quarter
We are happy to announce that for the fifth straight year the CalHiSports.com web site and Cal-Hi Sports will be part of the weekly Final Quarter high school football show on Friday nights on the FOX 40 station in Sacramento.
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FB: All-Time Preseason No. 1s
Check here for a look at preseason state No. 1 teams since 1979 and for how each of those teams finished in the final rankings. We begin with a historical look at preseason rankings beginning with Mater Dei for 2017.
One Year Of Bagley Will Have To Do
Sierra Canyon basketball star will reclassify to the Class of 2017, will likely play for Duke during the coming season and then enter the NBA Draft next spring. He’ll never be Mr. Basketball for California, but will count as being from California on all-time historical lists.
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Softball: All-Time Top 25 Coming Soon
Another editorial project that we’ve started working on in the last week and plan to have completed before the start of the 2017 football season is actually not from football. That will be the selection of the 25 greatest softball teams in state history.
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A Tale of Heat Stroke All Should Know
A GoFundMe account has been set up to help with medical costs for a high school football heat stroke victim from Stockton. The key for all to know is that many of these cases we’ve covered over the years are not necessarily for varsity football players. It’s for the younger ones on the freshman, sophomore and JV levels who may not know their physical limitations quite yet and may be more timid to tell their coaches they’re in trouble.
Jayden Jones, an incoming freshman at Lincoln High in Stockton, remained hospitalized on Sunday at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento after suffering a heat stroke injury at football practice last week. Jones was likely like thousands of incoming freshmen around the state as practices began last week, not knowing what to expect but interested in trying out for football.
As the CIF calendar has moved up one week earlier this year, however, the fears of heat-related football practice injuries are at an all-time high. And this first week of practice in the Central Valley was hot and humid.
The CIF itself has been sending out Twitter updates every day reminding all coaches and parents of heat-related health issues. We’re doing this post at Cal-Hi Sports as another reminder with the addition that a tale of an athlete suffering such an injury has already taken place.
Link HERE to a story on CBS13 out of Sacramento about Jayden’s situation.
Link HERE to a GoFundMe account set up by Jayden’s mother to help with expenses.
Have a great second week of practice everyone, but never lose sight of the health of all players and pay attention to all of the usual warning signs. Parents also need to tell their kids to never, ever be timid in asking for water breaks.
Sac High, Stockton High FB Win Totals
While updating the online portion of our state record book in the football team categories last week, we thought of going through the index cards we had in the office that contained all of the seasons played for Stockton High and Sacramento High.
A great majority of the school cards are in storage with managing editor Ronnie Flores, but we had the Stockton High and Sac High cards available and have always been curious whether Stockton High (which closed in 1954) had an all-time winning percentage good enough for the record book. For Sac High, since the school dates to the early 1890s, it was looking up a reported all-time win total.
Stockton did have some great teams — 10-0 in 1943, for example, with a lot of one loss squads — but a slow start prevented the Tarzans (yes, that was their nickname) from compiling an all-time record that makes the book. The record we came up with dating from the 1890s to 1956 was 246-166-31.
For Sacramento, the Dragons have been strong in recent years, including last year’s team that posted a win over Folsom, but they really struggled in the 1980s and 1990s. They do not yet have 500 all-time wins and still need a lot more 10-win seasons to reach .500. We figured out their all-time record to 458-488-34.
All of the index cards were compiled by our friend Bruce McIntosh. Several years ago, due a move, he couldn’t store them anymore where he was living so they went into storage. We can get to them through Ronnie and have used them as a service for schools interested in finding out about their football histories. It’s also possible to use them to look up win totals and sometimes those hunches turn out to be true (like with Pittsburg in Northern California). For Sac High and Stockton High, those are good totals to know but they don’t make the record book.
State Players on Polynesian POY Watch List
Nineteen players from California, many representing some of the highest-ranked teams for the preseason, have been selected for the first-ever Polynesian High School Football Player of the Year Watch List. The award will be presented annually to the most outstanding Polynesian senior high school football player in the nation.
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