High school football: Our top moments of 2024 season, plus final results of picks competition

The high school football season is officially behind us, but the memories are far from faded.

From Half Moon Bay’s Adler Halterman rushing for a school-record seven touchdowns against Foothill to Pittsburg charging back from 21 points behind to beat Folsom in a regional, our staff of Joseph Dycus, Nathan Canilao and Christian Babcock shared their favorite moments of the just-concluded season with moderator/assistant sports editor Darren Sabedra.

The guys were asked to pick the best game they covered and top overall memory, plus what they’d change before next season if they were in charge of the Central Coast Section, North Coast Section and/or state CIF.

Before they answered, the entire crew congratulated Babcock for winning the all-in-fun game predictions competition in his rookie season on staff.

Babcock’s November and December surge elevated him past weeks-long leader Sabedra to capture the title by two games. Sabedra finished second, followed by Mike Lefkow, Canilao and Dycus.

“I think he pulled off a Magic Johnson finals over there,” Canilao said, referring to Johnson winning the NBA championship in his rookie season of 1979-80. “That was a pretty good run there, Christian.”

Humble in victory, Babcock added, “That’s probably the first and last time I will ever get compared to Magic Johnson. So that’s pretty cool.”

Video roundtable: Full discussion here.
Scheduling note: Look for all-Bay Area News Group team in early January.

On to the questions …

Favorite game you covered?

Pittsburg quarterback Marley Alcantara (12) lifts up the first-place plaque after the Pirates defeated Folsom 28-27 for the CIF NorCal Division 1-AA regional championship on Friday, Dec. 6, 2024, in Pittsburg. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

Canilao: “For me, it was Pitt-Folsom. When Folsom goes up 21-0, I was sitting there going, ‘Oh, man, this is going to get ugly at Pirate Stadium.’ I said they were shook. And then Pitt comes back and they win that game. Just the scene on the field was pretty crazy. Nothing I’d ever seen before. Packed stands. Smoke from food everywhere. It encapsulated Friday Night Lights. … Honorable mention for me would be Northgate-Las Lomas. It was early season. It was absolutely packed, and Northgate pulled off one of the bigger upsets all season.”

Babcock: “I’ve got to throw in a couple of honorable mentions because I don’t want them all to get swept under the rug. Los Gatos-Wilcox has to be in there. That was a great game. Great performance by (Wilcox’s) Brayden Rosa at Los Gatos. I’d also throw in Los Gatos-Serra and Los Gatos-Riordan. Phenomenal games, both of them, came down to the wire. Great to see well-played playoff games come down to the end. The one I am going to pick, St. Francis-Grant, was the absolute epitome of that. You had St. Francis going for two late in the game, getting it, going up. And I think (St. Francis coach) Greg Calcagno said it best at the end of the game. That whoever had the ball last … was going to win. That ended up being Grant.”

St. Francis quarterback Aaron Knapp (12) congratulates Grant players who won the NorCal Division 2-AA championship game, 32-30, on Friday, Dec. 6, 2024, in Mountain View. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Dycus: “Honorable mentions are De La Salle-Pitt, obviously. Mack-Riordan in Week 1. But two games that I’ve circled are Campolindo-Acalanes, the regular-season matchup in the rain where Acalanes celebrates with what will I guess be a (possible) felony in Ohio by planting the flag. Great game. Rain. Bad weather. Great performance by both teams. The other one I have is Alameda and Encinal, the Island Bowl. I got there 2 1/2 hours before the game. The JV game had just started. The stands were packed. People were lined up around the field waiting for this game. It was on real grass. I said, ‘This feels like old-school high school football.’ Alameda blew out Encinal, but it was a really fun game.”

Favorite overall memory of season?

Teammates hold Half Moon Bay running back Adler Halterman (26) after he scored a school-record seven touchdowns in a 52-45 victory at Foothill on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)

Dycus: “The one I have is the Half Moon Bay kid, Adler Halterman, running for seven touchdowns in a (52-45) victory. At a certain point, I remember the Half Moon Bay coaching staff asking me, ‘Hey, how much touchdowns does Adler have?’ It was a close game, so it wasn’t stat-padding, either. They needed every score. That was a great game. Adler Halterman, seven touchdowns against Foothill.”

Babcock: “Generally speaking, getting to know a lot of the coaches and being in and around the locker room in postgame settings was really cool. A couple of games at SI come to mind. The upset over Serra was incredible. But I think I’d have to give it to Los Gatos-Riordan. That was a game with a great atmosphere. Beautiful setting there in the City. Very cool view of the City. The game was fantastic, and Los Gatos squeezed everything they had out of that game. Fantastic performance by them. Just a fantastic game to watch. Came down to the very end. Hail Mary play, caught out of bounds by about a yard. You can’t ask for much better than that.”

Canilao: “Honorable mention goes to — it’s not really a memory — but I just loved every time I covered O’Dowd and they ended up winning, Hardy Nickerson had the Dragon gif going on. That was always great. But my favorite memory was covering Ygnacio Valley. Coming into the season, they had the longest losing streak in the state. They hadn’t won in five years. Then they won in Week 2. They beat Redwood Christian and then they actually ended up winning three more. That’s a great group out there. They’re a young team.”

Bishop O’Dowd coach Hardy Nickerson celebrates a victory over Monte Vista on Sept. 6, 2024, in Danville. (Douglas Zimmerman for the Bay Area News Group)

If you were in charge of CCS, NCS and/or CIF, what would you change before next season?

Babcock: “I don’t really have a ton of stuff in the NCS and CCS realm. But I guess you could say from an NCS, CCS perspective — this would be a CIF change, as I understand it — I think you’ve got to have some of the state title football games up here. I know logistically for them it’s probably a lot easier for them to have them all in once place. I get there are advantages. The weather is a little better there, although it still gets chilly down in SoCal at night. But it you’re going to truly have state championship games, you’ve got to have some up here.”

Canilao: “A couple of things. On the CCS side, I think we have room for expansion. We had a couple of teams this year that had over seven wins that didn’t make the cut. Five divisions for CCS. The NCS is seven. I’d like them to expand it even just one more division. I think that would be great. And then this is for both. One Open Division final (without a preliminary round) would be great. We talked about it a couple of weeks ago, San Marin playing De La Salle as the eighth seed, it was not great. I think we should just have one Open Division final, then the loser playing in Division I.”

Dycus: “My take was kind of what Nathan just said. We don’t need eight teams in the NCS Open. The other one is, being here in Oakland, the OAL should just be a league within the NCS because McClymonds, yes, they basically get to go to NorCal every year as the perennial (Oakland) champion. I look at a team like Oakland High. Or the year before, Oakland Tech, or Castlemont. Those are teams that can compete in an NCS D-VI or D-VII, maybe even D-V some years. Instead, they’re relegated to, ‘You lost to Mack, now you’re out of NorCal.’”

What are you looking forward to about 2025 season?

Pittsburg’s Jamar Searcy (28) rushes for a first down against De La Salle while being defended by Ant Dean in the first quarter of the NCS Open Division championship game on Friday, Nov. 22, 2024, at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Canilao: “Obviously I’ve covered Pittsburg a lot. They lose 30-40 seniors. They still have a lot of talent coming back. RJ Mosley, Truly Bell, Kenny Ward. But I am interested to see how they rebuild this. I thought Marley (Alcantara), Juju Walls, Jamar Searcy were really the heartbeat of that team. I am interested to see how Charlie (Ramirez) rebuilds this program, losing all those guys and how they’re going to compete next year.”

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Babcock: I am kind of interested to see what St. Ignatius does next year. They were really a surprise team, I think, as far as we all were concerned to win to that extent, to win the CCS Open title in Lenny Vandermade’s second year. They’re losing some key guys. Soren Hummel, senior quarterback. John Mills will be out of there. their big offensive lineman. They’re going to have to replace some of these guys who were big foundational pillars for the program. Some of those guys will be back next year. But they’re not sneaking up on anyone anymore. Everyone knows what second-half SI is. Everyone knows that you’re going to get four quarters from them. They might wear you down and come back at the end.”

Dycus: “I am looking forward to seeing two things: One is the DAL. You have Clayton Valley Charter. Quite a few people thought they would pick up where they left off, dominate the DAL after returning from the EBAL. That wasn’t the case this year. I am wondering is Acalanes now just the team to beat in the DAL? Or Campolindo? They have a lot of guys coming back, their two best players. What is Clayton Valley going to do? I think it’s going to be one of the more interesting leagues. The other one is De La Salle I believe was 2 for 14 passing (against Mater Dei last weekend). I think it’s pretty well established that the veer (option) is an incredible offense against most opponents, all except the very, very, very best. I know a couple of years ago they tried to go to a spread. I am interested to see if De La Salle tries to incorporate a little bit more modern principles in their offense next year in an attempt to kind of be a little more competitive with some of these top-tier SoCal schools.”