With high school sports benched, Sacramento club football team is set for kickoff
The thing about putting together a club football team on the fly is there are all these moving parts.
Chaos becomes part of the package. Who has gear? Who’s paid up? Who’s in shape, who isn’t? What’s that dude’s name again and what school is he from?
Derrick Stephens hasn’t broken stride. The spirited 30-year-old built like a fire hydrant at 5-foot-7 and 192 pounds and nicknamed “Buff” is cobbling together and coaching a local outfit to block, tackle and reach the end zone. He is working “nonstop, 24/7, day and night” to get a group united and to showcase what the Sacramento region has to offer. The team is called Iron Sharpens Iron — Iron for short.
”Oh, it’s 100 mph, a lot of things going on, and I do feel a bit nervous heading into our first game because we have so much to do, but I feel confident,” Stephens said earlier this week..
Games will be played throughout January in Southern California in a league called the Winner Circle, a group of club teams from this state and Arizona. The action started Saturday night, in Chino in San Bernardino County, some 415 miles and seven hours south of Sacramento.
Iron beat Team Proj3ct of Corona 28-0 in a game that showed promise for the upstarts but also some rough edges, so much so that Stephens had the Instagram live feed of the game pulled. He was disappointed with the language his players were using and apologized on social media about it. It will get better, he promised.
Iron is not affiliated with any high schools, per the norm for club sports, so this outfit stands as a regional first. Club football could grow across the state if it is a success, given the COVID-19 restrictions that have put school-based sports on pause since last March. Part of the chaos shared with all club football is access to equipment and a place to practice or scrimmage. No high school venues will allow such things when their own sports teams are not allowed to compete. And not all area prep coaches are on board with the club concept, expressing concerns of safety, practice time and “mayhem.”
Iron is a collection of high school players from Sacramento, Elk Grove, Yuba City, Grass Valley, stretching into the Bay Area. Each student-athlete has been eager to slip on gear again, to be part of a team, to live it up, after more than a year on the bench. COVID-19 wiped out any semblance of a fall football season across the West Coast, and optimism may be the only thing that inspires any thought of a genuine spring season of high school teams playing in the spring if the COVID-19 numbers don’t settle a ton.
So here was a coach in scramble mode, ready to bus his group of 45 players down I-5 on Friday, expecting each to get caught up on the required $650 to be part of the action. Costs cover travel, lodging and insurance — and a chance to be seen on film for a college recruiter, be it Division I or small-college NAIA, or even community college.
For the Iron players who are high school juniors, this is a chance to make up for lost time.
“We want to help kids,” Stephens said. “It’s about kids, not their dads, or friends or anything else.”
Scramble mode
The coach was stressed early this week.
After several weeks of weekend practices in Elk Grove and regular weekday Zoom meetings with players and coaches, Stephens hustled to find a place to scrimmage a club team from the Bay Area on Tuesday. He found one, a tree-lined park not far from his childhood roots, just off Valley Hi Drive in south Sacramento.
This was Iron’s first time in pads, first efforts to tackle, to be a team beyond tryout drills. There were yard markers but no painted lines on the old grass surface. There were end zone pylons but no goal posts. There was a ball, however. There were no referees, but there was Stephens, who had a whistle, and the mandate was to play to the whistle.
With parents and siblings lining the field under a cloudy, cool day, the hitting was intense, sometimes well after the whistle. The trash talk was in abundance from Iron players trying to fire each other up, or to bark down the opponent.
A father from the Bay Area team helped himself onto the field throughout the scrimmage, coaching up his son, correcting another, talking to players from the Iron side. Iron, in mismatching practice garb, won the scrimmage handily. They scored five touchdowns, allowing none. Iron also had four turnovers.
Stephens said this journey is also about life lessons. He didn’t hesitate to pull one of his best running backs off the field for running his mouth, overruling the young man’s efforts to remain in the game with a stern, “Go! Leave! I love you, man, but you’re done for today. I’m ejecting you!” They hugged it out later, like father and son. They share that bond. Stephens has known the back since he was a little.
Said Stephens as he addressed his team after the scrimmage, “That stuff that happened on the sideline, all that talk and almost fighting? Don’t. You never know who’s here watching, or who will be down south watching. This is your job now. Take it seriously. Represent this team with how you act. Represent your name, your family. Don’t embarrass all of us.”
Stephens and his staff said after the scrimmage that the players’ use of a variation of the N word will stop. He still has the rest of the season to fully enforce that, or Stephens said he will remove players. After the Tuesday scrimmage, an Iron assistant coach challenged players to strive for college and to look and act the part of mature young men. Within their circle, the Iron players love each other. That was clear in practices and the scrimmage.
Stephens said his players have worked hard and that the rough edges can be ironed out.
“The kids haven’t complained or cried, or saying, ‘Coach, this is BS!’” he said. “They just want to play.”
Who are the top Iron players?
Iron has a roster of athletes, if no big-name players in terms of college recruiting.
Iron’s best running back may be Jonah Coleman, a star for Lincoln High in Stockton who sprinted and bulled for 1,587 yards and 30 touchdowns in 2019 as a 5-9, 185-pound sophomore. He’s thicker and no less fast now. Coleman caught touhdown passes of 47 yards from Terrance Ballard of Del Campo and 13 yards from Peni Kauifusi of Grant. Kauifusi had three scoring passes.
Iron has linemen from the Bay Area and Stockton but it has no players who made The Bee’s first- or second-team All-Metro clubs for 2019. Some didn’t play that season due to injury or other factors. Some are still coming into their own, including Trevaun Robinson, a 5-9, 175-pound linebacker who forced two fumbles with crushing hits in the scrimmage to set an early tone. In the game, Maliq Trice of Burbank forced three turnovers. He has missed much of his prep career due to injuries.
Tre Henry is a receiver/defensive back senior from Yuba City, one of the region’s most versatile players. He caught a touchdown pass on Saturday. Markel Taylor is a play-making 6-2 senior receiver for Sacramento High, polite in person and with a nasty disposition in competition. He also got into the end zone on Saturday.
“It means a lot to be out here, to play, and we all miss it,” he said.
Donavan Laban is a 6-1, 210-pound slot receiver from Grant. He lives for sports. Iron players touched on how good the game is for them emotionally and physically, an outlet with old friends and new ones.
“It’s been hard without football,” Laban said. “I’m hungry. I play hard. I’d love to get some film for a college recruiter to see, to get a paid education. I’ll give it my best shot.”
Said his father, Newyear Laban, watching the action, “I like this. It’s worth it. Football keeps my son busy, in shape, happy. You hear scary things like kids killing themselves — suicide — or going to the streets because they have nothing to do. I didn’t have a father figure in my life like my son did, and I would have taken the wrong path at this age without sports. My son has a positive path.”
Antonio Henry, father of Tre Henry, also approves of the club football theme. The one-hour roadtrips from Yuba City have been worth it, he said.
“We did the 7-on-7 football but it’s not tackle and it’s not the same,” Henry said. “My son has met so many friends through football over the year that they become family. The $650 we pay for this is worth it. To see your kid play, to see him happy, to get some games in? What a bonus.”
And there’s Gabe Baker. He looked the part of a football tough guy in this setting in his torn-up practice jersey, his long locks snaking past his ears when he pulled his helmet off. He is a 6-3, 235-pound junior at Nevada Union, a linebacker/fullback/quarterback.
”It feels amazing to be able to tackle again,” Baker said. “It’s been so mentally draining not having this outlet. We all need something good right now.”
This story was originally published January 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "With high school sports benched, Sacramento club football team is set for kickoff."