Stanislaus District’s Got Talent: Locker room stories and getting through league

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 at Central Catholic. He now teaches government and economics and coaches Central Catholic’s freshman team.

Inside the locker room

On the field, Central Catholic was rolling.

Three straight wins in 2015, where the Raiders outscored their opponents 137 to 28, proved their three prior section and state championship seasons were not a fluke.

The players were just as close off the field as on, bonding through football.

“There was a looseness to us, we joked, we would always be talking,” Liam Pecchenino said. “One of the things I really remembered about this group is we really loved football and not just high school. We loved college, we loved NFL, that’s all we talked about was football. And so coach (Roger Canepa) would always come in and get on us before games about how we need to lock in.”

One time, coaches thought the teens were a little too relaxed.

Hours before varsity kickoff at home games, the Raiders would get ankles taped, relax for about an hour, have a walk-through, watch the ending of the junior varsity game and then take the field.

Ahead of their league opener against Weston Ranch, the team was hanging out in the locker room before a walk-through.

“I always slept,” Pecchenino said. “I’d get nervous. Like I’d always get that pit in my stomach before anything I did competition-wise, so I would just go and I’d have to knock out.”

Canepa walked into the locker room and the usual bustle of a pre-game football locker room was not there. Players were stuffed in their lockers and on the floor, heads down, eyes focused on their phone screens. But they were not taking a last-minute glance at the scouting report. They were playing Madden Mobile, which just got its newest update in August 2015.

“He lost it. I mean just lost it on us,” Pecchenino said, laughing. “He kicked us all out of the locker room. He just thought we weren’t taking Weston Ranch very seriously.

He’s like, ‘I’m giving you guys the JV locker room. You’re gonna be in the JV locker room starting next week.’”

Almost anything would be better than a demotion to the JV locker room, so Pecchenino and Justin Rice went to sit in Rice’s car until walk-through.

The Raiders, fired up from a misunderstanding that saw Weston Ranch did its pregame run-out during the Central Catholic player, got out to a 35-0 first-quarter lead and never looked back, blowing out the Cougars. The win not only gave the team a 1-0 league start, it also earned back the players’ locker room privileges.

“After the game, coach Canepa said, ‘And I’ll just let you know you guys saved yourselves,’” Pecchenino recalled. “I don’t know if he was going to kick us out of the locker room permanently. I think he was just trying to get through to us. But I do remember that. I’ll never forget that. We were joking about it a couple of years ago, me and a couple of the guys.”

Other times, they were just kids being kids.

They almost had to forfeit the next week against Lathrop.

A member of the Raiders entourage got a permanent marker and wrote on one of the bathroom stalls. An assistant coach found it and they knew they messed up.

“To this day, no one knows who did it,” Pecchenino said. “But Roger was absolutely furious. … I don’t even know if it was a teammate. It could have been a ball boy, it could have been an equipment kid. I have no idea.”

By the time Canepa got into the locker room, the message was erased, but the damage was done. Canepa told the players they were not going onto the field until someone fessed up.

“Our tailback (Justin Rice) said he would take the blame for it, and before he could go out and do that, (safety Josh Frowein) goes out and tries to say he did it,” Pecchenino said.

But Frowein was never a likely suspect. He was a model citizen who toed the line and did things the right way.

“No one believed him, because there was no way. Like no way,” Pecchenino said, laughing. “He didn’t even make it all the way out to the coaches. He got like 10 steps from them and (athletic director and lineman coach) Billy (Hilla) says, ‘Nope. Get out of here. I know it wasn’t you.’”

Rice was next to accept blame. Once again, his confession fell on deaf ears.

So by now, they’ve eaten into some of their warm-up time and Canepa walked into the room.

“He’s like, ‘You know what, it’s not fair to punish everyone who works so hard for one kid, so we are gonna go out, we are gonna play this game. But this will be dealt with on Monday.’”

It was a threat no player likes hearing from a coach because in the back of his mind, he knows the next practice won’t be pleasant.

“I’m almost positive I had the SAT or the ACT I had to take the next day, so it was a crap weekend all around for me.”

Looking back on it now, it is a crazy thought. Imagine how that would have looked. A perfect season, ruined by a forfeit loss to Lathrop.

The Raiders won 44-6. Then all attention shifted to what would happen Monday.

“On Monday, we had a team meeting, and I guess over the weekend, the kid who had done it owned up to it and called them and took credit for it,” Pecchenino said. “To this day, no clue who did it, but it was dealt with privately.”

Dominance through the first part of league play

The Raiders made quick work of their first three league opponents.

Four rushers combined for six total touchdowns on the ground and the Raiders’ five rushers combined for 383 yards on 34 carries in the league opener against Weston Ranch. Jared Rice finished with 109 yards and two touchdowns, quarterback Hunter Petlansky rushed for two scores and passed for another, and Montell Bland and Kekupa’a Freehauf rushed for a touchdown and Bland caught a touchdown pass. The Raiders beat the Cougars 59-14.

The next week was a 44-6 win over Lathrop where Central Catholic raced out to a 28-0 first-quarter lead and was up 31-0 by halftime. The defense shined, allowing just 231 total yards and scoring on a DaRon Bland pick-six and a Freehauf fumble recovery return.

A win over Kimball, where the Raiders did not allow a touchdown, followed. The 69 points they scored were a single-game season high and the three points marked one of the lowest single-game totals of the season.

Central Catholic was on a mission through league play.

It was the Raiders’ second season in the Valley Oak League and all they heard from the outside were questions about if they belonged.

Their toughest challenges were on the horizon

But there was no time to get comfortable.

The back end of the VOL schedule was where things could get interesting.

A week after playing Kimball, they had to get ready for a Manteca team that likely had that game circled on its calendar. The year prior, Central Catholic beat the Buffaloes in a one-point, overtime thriller that was the team’s first loss of the year and ended up being just one of two VOL losses that 2014 season.

Three weeks after Manteca, they ended the regular season with a rivalry game against Oakdale. The game also had some extra juice for the Raiders because the year prior, Central Catholic’s first year in the VOL, the Mustangs blew out the Raiders, 48-28.

Central Catholic was eager to not only beat their rival but prove they belonged in the competitive VOL with a win over the league’s defending co-champion.

Then, there’s the postseason. The three-time defending D-IV section and state champions took on a whole new pressure, playing in different divisions in the 2015 postseason.

This story was originally published November 16, 2025 at 5:00 AM.

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.