Every week brings answers. It also creates a whole new set of questions.
That’s the fun of a high school football season. There are reactions, overreactions, and takeaways as San Joaquin County teams continue to show what they might become.
And then there are the numbers that make you look twice.
Some belong in a video game, the kind you might put up with Madden or EA Sports College Football set to easy mode. Others may not seem quite as unreal but still find a way to fill nearly every corner of the stat sheet.
Here are The Record’s biggest takeaways, reactions, and top individual performances from Week 5.
Key Takeaways
How real is Edison’s TCAL title shot?
Maybe Edison’s biggest question isn’t whether it can score enough. It’s whether anyone can slow this offense
down. No. 1 option and Division I recruit Alonzo Ward returned for the first time since the opener with seven catches for 100 yards and a rushing touchdown. His return puts Ward back alongside Kailan Beaver and a collection of other targets for quarterback Ayden McClendon Jr. in a receiving corps we’ve already dubbed the high school version of Wide Receiver U. Edison is now 4-1 after a 36-29 win over Wilcox, averaging 38.8 points with three games decided by seven points or fewer. Tracy is for real. St. Mary’s hasn’t surrendered a league title since 2014. Edison might be ready to challenge both.
Good luck making sense of this TVL race
The TVL has been around since 1959, and if this really is the beginning of the end, it’s putting on quite a show. Escalon just lost to favorite Hilmar. Ripon Christian fell to a back-to-back state champion. Ripon lost to a team that finished as a state runner-up in 2024. Yet all but one team in the league still sits inside California’s top 315. For a league long considered among the state’s best at the small-school level, this might somehow be one of its most competitive years yet.
How does a champion respond to its first league loss in two years?
Apparently, like this. Lathrop had gone from never winning a league title to capturing back-to-back WAC championships without a league loss before finally dropping one last week, its first since 2023. The Spartans didn’t let it linger. They came right back and hammered Pacheco 39-6.
Now that’s team football from Bear Creek
The SJAA title might be out of reach. A top-three finish might be, too. Bear Creek apparently didn’t care. The Bruins erupted for 70 points against Weston Ranch while piling up 8.5 sacks, four interceptions and five pass deflections. The wildest part? Nine different players scored a touchdown, and not one scored twice. Talk about a complete team performance.
River Islands isn’t going backward
So much for that 48-6 reality check sending River Islands back to its old ways. A week after getting blown out by a defending state champion, River Islands turned around and avenged last year’s 30-13 loss to Summerville with a 37-17 win. Daryl Carpenter threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns, Michael Figueroa had 93 receiving yards and two scores and Prince Presley rushed for 103 yards and two touchdowns. Four wins had already set a program record. Now River Islands has five.
Video Game Numbers
Elijah Walker, Chavez — What’s left for Elijah Walker to put his name on? The Chavez junior already helped deliver the program’s first league title and first undefeated regular season. Now he’s eclipsed 6,000 career passing yards and 80 touchdowns after shredding Tokay for 311 yards and five scores on 20-of-25 passing in a 49-14 win.
Ayden McClendon, Edison — Forget just being one of the best sophomores. Ayden McClendon Jr. is putting up numbers with the best quarterbacks in California. His 364 yards and four touchdowns in a 36-29 win over Wilcox pushed him to 1,704 yards and 19 scores, ranking second among sophomores and seventh overall in the state.
Kailan Beaver, Edison — Wilcox searched all night for an answer to Kailan Beaver. It never found one. The Edison senior erupted for career highs of 191 yards and four touchdowns on eight catches in a 36-29 win, pushing him to 620 yards and nine scores.
Dylan Ball, Escalon — If Escalon was going to take down TVL favorite Hilmar, Dylan Ball was going to give it everything he had. The junior delivered a career-high 209 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 20 carries, an interception and five tackles in a 36-32 loss.
Darnell Holmes, Stagg — The formula hasn’t changed since Darnell Holmes arrived at Stagg. Give him the ball and let him take care of the rest. The senior ripped off 174 yards and three touchdowns on just 14 carries in a 28-0 win over Merrill West, leaving him 12 yards shy of 3,000 career rushing yards and two scores from 50 total touchdowns.
Stat Sheet Stuffers
After three years at Manteca produced minus-1 career rushing yards, Roman Duvernay finally got his opportunity at Lathrop and delivered 152 yards and three touchdowns on 16 carries in his debut, a 39-6 win over Pacheco.
Consider this Devin Hunger’s breakout game. The Linden sophomore carved up Bret Harte for 211 yards and a career-high four touchdowns on 19-of-24 passing in a 40-6 win.
Apparently, slowing down Shawn San only lasts so long. Coming off his lowest passing yardage and touchdown total of the season, San fired for 243 yards and four scores on 8-of-15 passing in a 48-20 win over Franklin.
Extra motivation? Jackson Batch sure played like it. Facing his former school, the Oregon State commit piled up 105 receiving yards and three touchdowns as Chavez rolled past Tokay 49-14.
While Manteca’s offense piled up points, Jayden Harris made sure Mountain House had none. The Washington State commit grabbed two interceptions, made two tackles and hauled in a 43-yard touchdown in the 63-0 shutout.
This article originally appeared on The Record: San Joaquin County football Week 5 takeaways and top performances
