By Bill Paterson The Sacramento Bee
While The Honor Bowl (formerly Battle for Veterans) will continue as a mega, multiple-game football showcase in Southern California, only one local team will participate this year.
Del Oro will meet Union City’s James Logan at 8 p.m. on Aug. 30 in Loomis.
It’s a rematch of last year’s nonleague game in which Del Oro beat the Colts 20-13. It was Logan’s only loss until a 52-7 defeat in the North Coast Section title game to De La Salle, the CIF State Open Division winner.
The Del Oro-Logan game will be preceded by a 5 p.m. game between the sheriff’s departments from Placer and Nevada counties.
The event continues the following weekend in Oceanside in San Diego County, where four games will be played in two days at Oceanside High School, including Del Oro against Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks at noon on Sept. 7.
Other teams include state powers Serra of Gardena, Oceanside, Upland, Oaks Christian, Centennial of Corona and St. Bonaventure of Ventura.
Centennial lost to De La Salle of Concord in last year’s State Open final, and Serra beat Oakdale in the D-II state bowl.
“We’re sorry Sacramento had to suffer,” said Mark Soto, the event organizer and a former Granite Bay and Del Oro assistant coach. “Last year doing two large football events on back-to-back weeks almost killed us. It’s amazingly hard to do these, and we wanted to be sure to do it right.”
Last year’s event was played over four days and two weekends and brought large crowds to Del Oro and Westlake of Westlake Village.
The Del Oro event, an offshoot of the Battle at the Capital showcase that started in 2009 at Folsom High, featured three Sacramento-area vs. SoCal high school matchups – Franklin against Thousand Oaks; Del Oro against Westlake and Granite Bay vs. Oaks Christian.
The Southern California event had eight teams, including Del Oro and Granite Bay, the eventual Division I state bowl champion.
Soto has big plans for the future of this event. Next year’s goal is to hold multiple-game Honor Bowls in Southern California, Northern California and Allen, Texas, where the suburban Dallas community opened a $60 million, 18,000-seat high school stadium last year.
“It would be a dream to match a California team against a Texas team,” Soto said. “Our goal is eventually to have Honor Bowls across the United States.”