By admin 
It’ll be football, family and fierce, action-packed fun in Santa Clara County on Friday in a battle of storied prep programs.
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The Del Oro Golden Eagles of Placer County will play at Saint Francis of Mountain View on Friday night in a curious non-conference showdown pitting programs that are running out of room in the trophy case. Del Oro has won 13 CIF Sac-Joaquin Section championships, all since 1989, and the Lancers have collected 17 CIF Central Coast Section banners, the last in 2024.
So why are these heavies playing? It’s a brotherhood thing.
Del Oro’s head coach is Josh Parry, a fiery and spirited bearded man who played fullback in the NFL. His brother is Neil Parry, an assistant on coach Greg Calcagno’s Saint Francis staff. The brothers played at Sonora High School and at San Jose State.
Neil Parry is an example of pride and perseverance, an inspiration who in 2003 played on the punt return team at San Jose State with a prosthetic leg. He suffered a compound fracture during a game that led to a partial amputation of his right leg, and he returned to action three years later.
One of Del Oro’s top players is senior fullback, tight end and defensive end/linebacker Landen Parry, the son of the coach. Neil Parry has a son on Saint Francis, too, in Leonidus Parry, a two-way player for the Lancers.
Another assistant coach for Saint Francis is former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith.
The Lancers also include two receivers who are the sons of fine football coaches. Carter Shanahan is the son of 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan. Several 49ers players attended the Saint Francis opener, a 31-23 home victory over Manteca.
Lancers senior receiver Aaron Taylor is the son of Troy Taylor, The Sacramento Bee’s 1985 Player of the Year who coached Folsom High School and Sacramento State to championship seasons before coaching at Stanford for two seasons.
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Top-ranked Folsom relied on defense and special teams to survive the upset effort of Cardinal Newman of Santa Rosa on Friday.
Folsom won 23-17 in overtime on a touchdown run by quarterback Brody Rudnicki, but it would not have come down to that if not for two blocked field goals, including one late in the fourth quarter by Sacramento State-bound star Lua DeBerry to preserve the tie. CJ Wallace opened the second half with a 99-yard kickoff return.
EJ Coleman had 11 stops and Nick Wegner 18 to lead the Bulldogs defense. Folsom fans grumbled throughout the game, expressing displeasure with the game and the officiating, including one yelping, “Come on, coaches! Be better!”
“I’m happy for the kids,” Folsom coach Paul Doherty said afterward. “They were ecstatic to win this game, and they should be. Sometimes the standard is so high here that anything less than perfect, and these kids are walking around gloom and doom, but that’s not the case.
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“They’re high school kids, and they played well enough to beat this team, and those guys are good. Nothing’s easy, and that’s why we schedule that way…You get humbled, and you go to work. We’ve got to get better, and we will.”
State-ranked Mission Viejo visits Folsom on Friday. The Orange County juggernaut was the only team to beat Folsom during the Bulldogs’ CIF State title season in 2025.
Cal-Hi Sports has compiled state rankings since the 1970s and will drop a team even after a victory. Folsom started the season preseason ranked No. 1 in Northern California but is now ranked second behind De La Salle of Concord, with the Spartans’ opening 35-25 win at Serra of San Mateo considered more impressive than what Folsom did.
Alumni coaching wins at Bear River, Del Campo, Sacramento
Coaches who won their head-coaching debuts at their alma mater now want to back up their good fortune in an effort to return their programs to the postseason.
On Friday, Jordan Botha and Justin Smith led their teams to victory, and Josiah Johnson did the same on Saturday in Oak Park.
Botha appreciated his gritty team’s 13-6 win over Burbank as Wesley Mitchell and Nate Webster scored touchdowns. Botha was a key player and leader for Del Campo in 2009 and 2010 under the program’s winningest coach in Mike Dimino. The 2009 DC team won a CIF Sac-Joaquin Section championship at 13-1, and the 2010 club went 8-3 with Botha scoring 23 touchdowns as a receiver/tight end and linebacker.
Justin Smith was a defensive stalwart for Bear River’s greatest team, the 1994 group that won a section Division III championship under famed coach Terry Logue and was state-ranked No. 1 by Cal-Hi Sports in that division, well before the state playoffs started.
In his debut, Smith watched the Bruins beat Golden Sierra of Garden Valley, 26-20, to kick off the 40th season of Bruins football in Lake of the Pines/Grass Valley. Bear River players are wearing throwback helmets with the maroon interlocking “BR” on the side of the helmet, the same look of the 1990s teams.
Carson Schaffner rushed for 213 yards on 24 carries and two touchdowns, and Jaeden Waters went for 139 yards on 21 attempts and a score as Bear River rushed 63 times for nearly 400 yards.
Johnson sweated out a gritty if sloppy opener as Sacramento High beat Sonoma Valley 18-13. King Mastin took handoffs, caught passes and returned a fumble 80 yards for a score as a hidden-gem college prospect.
Johnson set Sac High passing records as a senior in 2013 under coach Paul Doherty, now heading the Folsom team.
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Said Johnson of his return to his old school: “I am living the dream.”