SACRAMENTO, CA -- The Del Oro High football team, after all it had overcome in getting to the state bowl title game, wasn’t about to let a little December rain dampen its spirits.
So when the skies opened up after The Golden Eagles’ gritty 16-13 win Friday night against Camarillo and water cascaded down onto the Loomis team as it posed at mid-field for its championship photo, the Eagles whooped and hollered as one might expect of a state champ.
“It really is the kind of thing you dream about at night,” said Del Oro star running back Camrion Davis who led the Golden Eagles with 202 yards rushing and two touchdowns. “I never thought it would materialize, but I always thought about playing in the state championship and helping my team win and that’s exactly what I did and what my team did tonight.”
Even better, Del Oro did it virtually at home, playing just a short jaunt from its Sac-Joaquin Section home.
“It feels great,” Davis said. “I mean, the CIF Bowl is in Sac. All my family is here, the community of Loomis. The community of Loomis supports us all of the time. I just love it. The crowd was unbelievable, and our band.”
The state bowl title win was the first for Del Oro and its veteran coach Casey Taylor after a 56-26 Division I setback to Bakersfield in 2013 and a 35-24 D-II loss to Helix-La Mesa in 2011.
Facing a daunting schedule that included such heavyweights as Bellarmine and De La Salle, Del Oro stumbled to a 2-6 record by late October and appeared to be running on fumes. Then the Golden Eagles got it together, rolling to eight consecutive wins to end the season, including a 28-24 victory last week against host Liberty-Bakersfield in a game they trailed by two touchdowns.
“It’s awesome,” said Del Oro receiver/safety Mason Hurst who had five catches for 75 yards and a key interception. “People doubted us when we had a rough patch in the season, but we showed them who we are and came back on an eight-game, live-or-die streak and we did it.”
Del Oro (10-6) continually came up with the big play, never more so than after Camarillo rallied to within 10-6 on an 18-yard touchdown pass from Jake Constantine to Frankie Tostado with 3:07 left in the third quarter. Constantine evaded the rush nicely and threw a strike to Tostado who got some separation from the defender in the left corner of the end zone.
“Cam-a-rill-o,” Scorpion fans chanted in its familiar sing-song fashion.
Following a Del Oro punt, Camarillo (15-1) marched to the Golden Eagle 5 where it had a first down. But Hurst stepped in front of a Constantine pass and intercepted as Del Oro staved off one of numerous Scorpion threats.
“We had to make a play,” Hurst said. “We had to stop them and someone had to step up and make a play and I did, but we did it as a team.”
Six plays later, Davis burst around the right side, bounced off a Camarillo defender, tight-roped down the sideline and legged out a 58-yard scoring run. That play, less than two minutes into the fourth quarter, was the back-breaker for Camarillo.
“I just lowered my shoulder and squared him up and I wasn’t going to let anybody bring me down,” Davis said.
