Amador football team hits fundraising goal in less than 24 hours

Amador High School’s history-making football team may have made a little history off the field over the weekend as well.

The school set out to raise $9,000 for overnight travel expenses for its CIF Northern California regional play-in game against San Francisco’s Lincoln High and reached that goal in less than 24 hours.

“Amador County is an amazing community,” said Jeremy Edwards, director of football operations for Amador High School.

The Buffaloes (12-1), who captured the school’s first Sac-Joaquin Section football crown with a 30-7 win over Bradshaw Christian of Sacramento in the Division VI title game last weekend, will take on the Rams (8-5) on Saturday at noon.

For the section championship game at Lincoln High in Stockton, the Buffaloes left Sutter Creek at about 9:30 a.m. to be at Spanos Stadium by 10:30, 2 1/2 hours before the 1 p.m. kickoff. To maintain the same pregame itinerary for San Francisco without a travel budget, the bus would have needed to leave Amador High at 6:30 a.m.

“And some of our students live 45 minutes away from campus,” Edwards said. “They’d have to get up at 4:30 in the morning to be at school to catch the bus.”

A reveille that early, followed by a three-hour bus ride, would have been a huge disadvantage.

Now, the team will spend the night in a hotel near San Francisco International Airport, have a team meal at the hotel and then have team meetings and film sessions. Following a team breakfast Saturday morning, the Buffs will make the 20-minute drive to the city’s Sunset District.

American Legion Ambulance in Sutter Creek and Jackson Rancheria Casino Resort came through with the bulk of the donations.

“Even before the ambulance service and Jackson Rancheria, we had already raised about $4,000 in 12 hours from individual citizens,” Edwards said.

Biggs, the Northern Section D-V champion, will play Stockton’s Brookside Christian, the Sac-Joaquin Section D-VII champ, in the other play-in game.

When it comes to choosing teams for the play-in games, the CIF is limited to Northern California teams that have already won a section title. Essentially, only the winners of the San Francisco and Oakland city sections, the Northern Section and Sac-Joaquin Section champions in Divisions IV through VII make up the pool of play-in candidates.

“Who gets to host these games should never be considered a slight against one team or another, because it’s not determined by the higher-seeded team,” said Ron Nocetti, CIF associate executive director. “We spread them out so we have games in every part of the state.”

Teams must apply to host NorCal play-in and regional bowl games. It’s unclear whether Amador’s administration made such a request.

The winner of Amador-Lincoln will square off against the Biggs-Brookside Christian winner for the right to face a Southern California team in a CIF state championship bowl game Dec. 17.

This story was originally published November 28, 2016 at 8:07 PM with the headline "Amador football team hits fundraising goal in less than 24 hours."