The regular season for high school football is in the books following Friday’s jam-packed slate of games. While some local teams will return their gear to their athletics departments in the coming days, a handful of teams await playoff seeding for all seven divisions.
Those brackets will be released on Sunday during the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section football selection show, hosted by section assistant commissioner Will DeBoard, the Turlock Journal’s Joe Cortez and the Sacramento Bee’s Joe Davidson. The show will kick off at 1 p.m. and will be live streamed for free on the NFHS Network at https://www.nfhsnetwork.com/associations/cifsjs. The panel, who have nearly 100 combined years of prep sports coverage under their belts, will provide analysis on the teams and break down the matchups.
Sunday afternoon will bring more stress to some teams than others.
Two-time defending Division 6 champion Hughson are sitting comfortably after an undefeated, nine-game regular season that actually came to an end seven days ago. This year’s Trans-Valley League champion was slated to face Modesto Christian on Friday, but it never came to fruition. The Crusaders finished the year 0-7 after failing to score a point while surrendering a combined 316. They recently defected from the TVL.
The Huskies are sure to have a first-round bye, which means they’d enter their playoff opener with 21 days of rest. Following their last game against Hilmar, head coach Shaun King said that the time off could help the Huskies heal up after going through the gauntlet that is the TVL — a league whose members have combined to win five state titles since 2018.
Turlock hopes to join the nearby town in having the week off, and the chances of them being awarded the bye are looking good.
The Bulldogs capped off their regular season with a 51-7 throttling of Enochs under the lights of Joe Debely Stadium. The win pushed their overall record to 7-3 and was able to officially clinch their second straight undefeated campaign in the Central California Athletic League. Their losses came against Rocklin in Week 1 (41-28), Central of Fresno in Week 3 (28-22) and Folsom in Week 4 (19-15).
The ‘Dogs are dynamic, with a solid defense on the other side of an electric offense that puts up points in bunches, whether it be through the air or on the ground. MaxPreps.com currently has Turlock ranked fourth in the Division 1 bracket behind Folsom, Oak Ridge and Central Catholic, who all won Friday night. If the section’s thinking mirrors MaxPreps, the Bulldogs will have the week off.
Down the street in Denair, the Coyotes will be playing postseason ball for the first time since 2019, when they fell just short of a second straight SJS D-7 title after losing 17-14 to Mariposa County in overtime. The program, whose 28 players are the most they’ve fielded since they had 26 in 2021, went 5-5 in the regular season, including a 3-3 record in the Southern Athletic League to finish in third place. They’ll enter the playoffs on a two-game losing streak, falling to Delhi, 27-20, on Senior Night a week ago and getting blown out, 41-14, by Waterford on Friday.
Also ending their regular season riding a string of losses is Hilmar, a playoff regular who has been bitten by the injury bug throughout the year as they navigated the tough TVL schedule. Their losing streak was extended to three on Friday after losing a nail-biter to Ripon, 27-26, at McSweeney Field. They finished with a 4-6 overall record, including 2-4 in conference competition. The four wins are good enough to qualify for the Division 5 playoffs, though, which features 12 teams like all brackets, with the exception of D-7.
