Hooray! It is Opening Day!

And like the last several years, the CCS football season opens on a Thursday with 10 games being played in the CCS. South City is the only Peninsula Athletic League team playing and the Warriors will host San Lorenzo Valley-Felton (Santa Cruz mountains) at 7 p.m. The Grizzlies drilled the Warriors in last year’s opener, 39-14 as they went 9-1 and finished second in the Pacific Coast Athletic League’s Santa Lucia Division, which is the equivalent of the PAL’s Lake Division.

South City went on to win the 2024 El Camino Division to go along with 2023’s Lake Division crown. You can read the 2025 South City preview in today’s Daily Journal.

Friday, 14 more county teams will be in action. Carlmont will host Lincoln-San Francisco, Sequoia is at Capuchino, Los Altos will be in San Mateo to take on the Bearcats (which will be having a ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremony of the school’s new gym Friday afternoon), Jefferson will take the trip over the hill to take on Terra Nova on the coast, while the coastside’s other team — Half Moon Bay — will be at Burlingame.

Meanwhile, Woodside is at Westmont and Mills is heading to San Jose Academy. All these games begin at 7 p.m.

At 7:15 p.m., Hillsdale will be at Live Oak-Morgan Hill, while Aragon will go to Pioneer. And then there is Menlo-Atherton, which will be making the longest road trip of any Peninsula team when the Bears head to Sacramento to take on Destiny Christian Academy — neé Capital Christian.

Saturday, the three local private schools kick off their season, along with El Camino, which will be on the road at Balboa for a 2 p.m. kickoff.

Serra, which is ranked No. 29 in the state by MaxPreps.com, will host No. 9 Folsom at 2 p.m., which opened its season last week with a 51-13 win over Grant-Sacramento.

Sacred Heart Prep, the defending CCS Division IV champ, will host Sacred Heart Cathedral, while Menlo School will welcome Hozho Academy-New Mexico. The Wolves were 4-6 last year.

Both those games are at 2 p.m., as well.

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Normally during the football season, we’ll run our “Game of the Week,” a feature/preview story of what we think is the best matchup on the Peninsula on any given week.

We won’t run one this week because of our football team and division previews, but if I were to write one, it would be a toss up between Half Moon Bay-Burlingame and Folsom-Serra. The fact they are on two different days — Cougars-Panthers Friday night and Bulldogs-Padres Saturday afternoon — gives football fans a chance to see two great games.

Half Moon Bay and Burlingame may play in different divisions of the PAL — the Cougars are in the Ocean and the Panthers play in the division above it in the De Anza — but don’t be surprised if this game is decided by a touchdown. Both employ a heavy dose of ground-and-pound and tough, physical defenses. Don’t expect a lot of passing and don’t be late because this could be one of those two-hour games.

Saturday’s Folsom-Serra matchup is the first of three straight marquee matchups for the Padres — and that’s before even getting into West Catholic Athletic League play.

You won’t find a team in the CCS that has a tougher non-league schedule than Serra. After Folsom, the Padres will host De La Salle next week, ranked No. 8 in the state by MaxPreps.com. That is followed by a road trip to Southeast Los Angeles County to take on St. John Bosco-Bellflower, which is ranked second in the nation.

Nathan Mollat has been covering high school sports in San Mateo County for the San Mateo Daily Journal since 2001. He can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com.