Teams looking further afield to find games

This meant teams only had to schedule three or four other non-league games, based on whether a school had a traditional rivalry game at the end of the regular season.

So while the merger has helped, it hasn’t been enough on the scheduling front.

“Scheduling a high school football game is really, really tough,” said Menlo-Atherton head coach Chris Saunders. “The only teams who want to play you are the ones who think they can beat you.”

As such, more and more teams are looking outside the section for non-league games. Teams are more willing to cross the Golden Gate, Bay, San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges to find teams that are compatible and equally competitive as themselves.

Last week, Sacred Heart Prep traveled to Merced to take on El Capitan; M-A took on state power Acalanes in Lafayette; Sequoia, which has been going on one long non-league road trip per season since the mid 2000s, continued that tradition with a game in Reno; Carlmont went to Ukiah, Pacheco-Los Banos came to Half Moon Bay.

This week, Burlingame hosts Arroyo-San Lorenzo, a reciprocation of last year’s game in San Lorenzo. Woodside hosts Castro Valley tomorrow night; Hillsdale is heading to Pleasant Hill’s College Park to take on Concord-based Mt. Diablo, whose brand-new artificial turf field was burned in a suspected arson.

And in a couple of weeks, Aragon will host Piedmont.

Sell said it’s easier than ever to find a competitive game pretty much anywhere in the state, due to the proliferation of online and streaming video of games, statistics placed on sites like MaxPreps.com and Hudl.com and the advent of the CalPreps.com (now hsrankings.com) ranking algorithm that is part of the Central Coast Section football seeding process, a team can quickly pinpoint possible opponents.

“It’s a good preliminary starting point,” Saunders said, adding that it then goes into a deeper dive of the team itself.

But most of these matchups are not made for the thrill of playing an unfamiliar opponent, or the camaraderie forged on a long-ish bus ride. Many times, they’re made out of necessity.

M-A, for example, had three teams it played last season pull out for the 2025 season. And as much as Saunders would have liked to stay more local, he had to take road trips to Sacramento and Lafayette in consecutive weeks to open the season.

“Ninety percent of it (choosing an opponent) is that it was who we could find,” Saunders said. It’s M-A. Our reputation is still what it is.”

Despite the fact that this year’s Bears squad in not the dominant team it has been over the last several years.

Steve Sell, the director of PAL football and longtime Aragon football coach and athletic director, said a team’s reputation of success can hamper scheduling.

“I always thought that if you had a really good team and were physical, you paid a two-year penalty in terms of finding non-league games,” Sell said. “If you were good, your calls went unanswered.”

Saunders experienced this firsthand.

“We put out classifieds (ads) and it will sit there for two months with one response. You have to try and navigate (scheduling) without a map,” Saunders said. “I’m not exaggerating. I was looking (at teams in) the Southern Section and San Diego Section, debating, ‘Is this what we do?’”

Sell believes many teams are willing to travel or set up home games outside the section if it means a better matchup for their team.

“I think the overriding theme is, in the coaches’ opinion, and athletic directors and Board of Managers, everyone agreed, traveling a few extra miles for a competitive game in a physical game (like football) is worth it. So if you’re Aragon or Hillsdale and have a chance to play Oak Grove or Mt. Diablo, instead of Menlo-Atherton, we’ll travel,” Sell said.

Sell said he sat down with second-year Dons’ head coach Ash Parham in December to go about putting together the 2025 non-league schedule and settled on Piedmont from the East Bay.

“We went 1-9 last year. Who do we want to play? We’re already playing the Ocean (Division). We’re a ‘B’ team, so we’re looking for ‘B’ teams. It was [Piedmont] or another ‘A’ team,” Sell said.

“[Coaches] are trying to find competitive matchups and with smaller rosters. They are not willing to roll into really strong, elite teams (that have) 43 kids and eight linemen. No thank you. We’ll jump on a bus and drive across a bridge.”

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.