Stanislaus District’s Got Talent: Preseason and Week 1 set the tone

Featured player: Liam Pecchenino

Pecchenino will be one of the recurring players featured in this seasonlong series. Before he was a track and field athlete at Fresno State, he was a two-year varsity player at safety, tight end and linebacker. He contributed on special teams and on defense, tallying 16 tackles and one sack his senior season. He now teaches government and economics and coaches Central Catholic’s freshman team.

Setting the tone

If you ask Roger Canepa , he’ll tell you he doesn’t like bye weeks. And if you had asked him in 2015, he would have told you the same thing.

The only kind of bye the veteran high school coach appreciated was one in the very first week of the season. It essentially served as an extra week of the preseason. It allowed for extra practice with the full roster and gave anyone injured during the preseason scrimmage extra time to heal up. More importantly, a Week 1 bye meant the team’s routine wasn’t put on pause in the middle of the season.

The 2015 Raiders started the season with Canepa’s kind of bye.

After grueling summer months of conditioning and weeks of tough preseason practices, Pecchenino and some teammates went out to catch a game that night. He went to Gregori’s home game against Chavez with a few teammates and tried to stay out of the limelight.

But months earlier, after winning their third straight state title, the Raiders got to work during their summer workout sessions.

Camp Misery

That summer preseason session was miserable, Pecchenino recalls.

Not only were there repetitive days of viewing and reviewing plays, brushing up on blocking assignments for the linemen and coverage assignments for the linebackers and defensive backs, but the Valley was in the grip of heat waves.

“I forgot how many consecutive days of over 100 degrees it was,” Pecchenino said. “And you know coach Canepa never cares. Everyone thinks he’s rough now, he was rough then, too.”

The section’s practice rules back in 2015 were different than they are in 2025. Every year near the end of the summer session, the Raiders used to end with “summer camp.” It was a three-day camp with three workouts a day for the first two days: practices morning and afternoon with a break for rest and lunch in between. Then the evening session was a scrimmage. They would do that the first two days, and then the third was just one full practice with a scrimmage.

“It was called Mountain Misery, but Sonora was redoing their field (in 2015) so we did it here,” Pecchenino said. “So we jokingly took the mountain out of it and we just called it Misery Football Camp.”

After that was the weekslong dead period, then official practices started in August with the same acclimation rules, gradually moving from helmets to shells (helmets and shoulder pads) to full pads.

“It was one of those weird situations where we all just kind of agreed that if we did what we had to do, we just knew we were going to win,” Pecchenino said. “We had just got kicked up to D-III, we didn’t care. We were ready for it.”

After the intensity of summer and preseason practices, the Raiders went to their annual varsity-only team retreat in Jamestown. There, the players talked about preseason goals on the field and in the classroom.

“I think the big (goal) we had was no regrets,” Pecchenino said. “The year before, we had a couple regrets where we didn’t prepare well, so we were just like, hey, at the end of this year, we’re seniors. This is it.”

Kicking up their feet

Finally, a break.

Friday, Aug. 28, nearly every Stanislaus District football team put on pads on for its first gameday. The Raiders didn’t, which gave Pecchenino the chance to finally catch a game.

“I grew up going to high school football games, mostly here (Central Catholic), but we went all over,” he said. “And for three years, I hadn’t really gone to a high school game. I don’t think we went anywhere Week 0 my junior year. … I had never been to (Gregori’s) stadium or field, so we just went and watched and tried to stay out of as much trouble as we could.”

That was the speech they got wherever they had a bye. Pecchenino can still recite it 10 years later. And he does, as one of the coaches on the Raiders’ freshman team. “It’s, ‘Hey, if you’re going out, be smart. If you’re going to wear something with ‘Raiders’ on it, remember you represent Central Catholic,’” he said.

Rolling through Week 2

Week 2 was the Raiders’ first game and they made a statement against Atwater.

A 49-0 statement.

The win also was No. 200 for Canepa, who has since become the winningest coach in Sac-Joaquin Section history. He got the milestone 283rd victory in a first-round Division I playoff game in 2023 with a 34-20 first-round Division I playoff win over Edison of Stockton.

Jared Rice was The Bee’s reigning player of the year and made an early case to go back-to-back, rushing for 102 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries. Quarterback Hunter Pentlansky completed eight of 12 passes for 141 yards and three touchdowns and ran seven times for 75 yards and a score. DaRon Bland, a junior , caught a touchdown pass of more than 60 yards. The defense was just as dominant, allowing just 60 yards of total offense.

The three-time defending state champs played with a running clock the whole second half after going up 36-0.

That game was just a warmup for the next week, a Holy Bowl matchup against St. Mary’s of Stockton. Central Catholic was motivated in 2015, after losing to the Rams the year before.

But the first goal was to win game No. 1, and that was accomplished. It set them up for what would be a legendary season.

“Because we had won that year before, a lot of teams might take that as you don’t have to try as hard,” Pecchenino said. “It really wasn’t that. We worked, it was more like there wasn’t anything hanging over our heads. We had one (state title). So it was like we want to beat specific teams.”

This story was originally published September 9, 2025 at 3:01 PM.

Quinton Hamilton

The Modesto Bee

Quinton Hamilton covers high school sports for The Modesto Bee. He is a Southern California native and received his bachelor’s degree from Pacific Union College and a master’s in journalism from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. Quinton has worked at the Record-Journal in Meriden and helped on projects at Hearst Connecticut.