Seven days earlier at a venue two miles to the east, the Grant Pacers went for the jugular.

They elected to go for a 2-point conversion late at Monterey Trail High School on Oct. 20 but were stopped inches shy of the goal line and had to chew on that one-point loss right up until Friday’s kickoff at Cosumnes River College.

This time, The Bee-ranked No. 5 Pacers left little doubt, scoring on the ground and in the air early and often to race past No. 15 Laguna Creek 48-7 in a Metro League finale in serving notice that they are ready for a repeat championship run.

Grant received two first-quarter rushing touchdowns from Devin Green and 171 yards rushing and a score from fellow dynamo back Wayshawn Parker to move to 8-2. Luke Alexander provided the balance, hitting Kingston Lopa for two first-half touchdown strikes and three total to spoil Laguna Creek’s Senior Night in looking every part the favorite to repeat as CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Division III champions.

Grant expects to earn the top seed in the D-III bracket when the section announces the brackets on Sunday afternoon, meaning an opening-round bye and home playoff games in Del Paso Heights with the finals set for Hughes Stadium.

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Grant coaches challenged players to respond to the Monterey Trail setback, and the team delivered emphatically against an upstart team that is headed to the D-II playoffs. A win against Grant would have been Laguna Creek’s most significant triumph since the school’s best team reached the Division I semifinals in 2001.

“Would we have loved to have beaten Monterey Trail and won the Metro League? Yeah, no doubt,” Grant coach Carl Reed said. “But we went for the win. In that situation, you have to go for the win, and they stopped us. That’s not why lost the game. We made a lot of mistakes with penalties and turnovers, and Monterey Trail is too good of a team.

“We’re a few plays away from being unbeaten and ranked second in the area (behind Folsom). In our two losses (including 21-18 to No. 2 Oak Ridge), we had costly mistakes but still had the ball at the end with a chance to win, so we’re OK.”

More than OK. The Pacers are a mix of power and speed, skill and tenacity. In other words, they are built much like the Grant teams that have won eight section championships since 1992, the first six under famed 282-game winning coach Mike Alberghini, whose name graces Grant’s stadium.

The last section title came last fall under Bee co-Coaches of the Year Reed and Syd Thompson, Grant alums who came full circle to give back to a school that gave them so much.

The Pacers lost a ton of talent via graduation but returned some key players, including Lopa, the 6-foot-5 senior receiver/safety headed to the Oregon Ducks on full scholarship.

The Pacers’ leading running backs are also D-I college commits. Green is verbally committed to UNLV and Parker to Washington State. Binding letters of intent can be signed in December.

Green on Friday played his third game with Grant after sitting seven weeks of the season after his transfer from Sheldon of the Elk Grove Unified School District. Parker was cleared to play for Grant at the beginning of the season after his transfer from Elk Grove High.

“It’s been fun,” Parker said. “No hard feelings with Elk Grove. I still talk to their coaches.”

Green and Parker blended right in with their new teammates, low-key guys who play inspired, angry and sometimes quite fast. Green was cleared by an appeals committee after the CIF governing body initially declared him ineligible to compete for the entire season.

“Devin was with us every day in practice, and for weeks, we wondered, ‘Is he cleared?’” Reed recalled. “He’s fit right in. The guys love him.”

Same with Parker, whose ability to run with fury or with burst has endured him to his teammates and flustered defenses trying to slow him down. Parker raced 82 yards on his first carry to set up Green’s 3-yard touchdown to open the scoring. Green’s 1-yard TD plunge made it 14-0, and Alexander hit Lopa for scoring passes of 15 and 23 yards for a quick 28-0 lead.

Alexander had a 9-yard TD strike to freshman Koby Shabazz to make it 35-7 to leave little doubt who the better team was. A junior, Alexander now has 30 touchdown passes. Parker has 1,374 yards and 16 TDs, and Green has five TDs in his short stint with more surely to come.

The defense stalled out a prolific Cardinals team that lost to Monterey Trail 41-35 in double overtime. Laguna Creek is 7-3 and looms as a dark horse in the D-II field. Grant capped a 20-yard interception return for a score by Halim Reynolds, his fifth of the season.

Pacers stand for city pride

The Pacers also bound into the playoffs with extra meaning. Grant coaches, players and alumni pride themselves in exactly who and what they are — a gritty football team rooted in the city, the pride of Del Paso Heights. Pacers players feed off challenges and hurdles in front of them.

Grant stands as an example that a city program can excel while so many others across the state struggle with small roster numbers, few wins and even fewer fans.

Grant can also relate to the ups and downs that are common for public schools. The Pacers endured a winless 2021 campaign and then roared back to win a section, Northern California and CIF State Division 3-AA championship last fall, winning that last game on their home turf in front of an overflow roaring crowd, punctuated by Reed telling his team that night after everyone exhaled: “Mission accomplished.”

“We want to represent Grant and Sacramento and all city schools,” Reed said. “This is who and what we are, and we’re proud of it. We put the city on our back. That’s us.”