SPIN final-score card: De La Salle 35, Serra 25, Friday, Aug. 28, 2026.

SAN MATEO, Calif. — SPIN's NorCal No. 1 went to its No. 3 to open the season and was behind after twelve minutes.

Serra led 14-7 after the first quarter and 17-14 at the half, the last of those on Parker Fraser's 43-yard field goal as time expired. De La Salle took the lead in the third and put it away with 14 in the fourth. Duece Jones-Drew scored in the final quarter and a pair of late touchdowns closed it out, per Chris Babcock of the Mercury News.

Serra had snap problems early and again late. Prayshawn Harang sacked Caleb Bandel in the fourth, per the San Mateo Daily Journal.

The quarter line: De La Salle 7-7-7-14, Serra 14-3-0-8. Serra scored 14 in the first quarter and 11 the rest of the way.

Out West Editor

Sloane Ritter

NorCal's No. 1 opened its season 35-25 at No. 3 Serra of San Mateo

De La Salle Trailed After a Quarter and Scored 14 in the Fourth

SPIN results card reading MATER DEI WINS over a photo of a tackle in the open field, with the final score No. 8 Mater Dei 32, Orem 26.

With under four minutes left on Saturday night, Orem had the football, a six-point deficit, and a chance to beat the eighth-best team in America. It did not convert. Mater Dei won 32-26 and got on a plane.

Orem lost. Almost nothing else about the night says so.

Start with what the sport expected. The Massey projection had Mater Dei winning 41-7 and gave Orem a one percent chance. Orem is 1-2 now and was 1-1 walking in, having already lost at Skyridge. It is our No. 7 team in Utah, not our first, and its record after three weeks is the worst on our Utah board outside of Davis.

Now add the part that has not been said enough. Orem plays in 5A. Utah's top classification is 6A. This was not the best team in the state going toe to toe with a national program; it was a team from the second tier of its own state, ranked seventh in that state by us, taking the No. 8 team in the country to one possession with the ball late.

The comparison that makes it land is eight days old. On August 21, Mater Dei beat American Fork 31-11. Same Mater Dei, same August, another Utah opponent, a 20-point win. Then it came back and beat Orem by six.

Orem was not alone. West of Salt Lake City is also a 5A school and is 3-0. It opened by beating Arbor View of Las Vegas 20-14, a team that sits on our Nevada Power 10. Then on Friday it beat Archbishop Riordan of San Francisco 21-13, holding a California opponent to 13. Two out-of-state wins, both by one score, both against teams that came in expecting to leave with something.

Put those together and the week reads differently than the standings do. A 5A school in Salt Lake City is 3-0 against Nevada and California. A 5A school in Utah County had the ball in the last four minutes against a top ten national team. Neither of those teams is the best team in Utah. Corner Canyon is 3-0 and has outscored people by margins that make the point without help, and Mountain Ridge has scored 41, 42 and 42.

None of this is an argument that Utah football is suddenly national. It is an argument that the floor is higher than the out-of-state programs scheduling here seem to think it is, and that the gap they are shopping for is not always there when they land.

Orem gets Springville on September 4 and will be favored. The loss goes in the book at 1-2. The tape says something else.

Contributing Writer

Max Fielder

Mater Dei won 32-26. Eight days earlier it beat American Fork by 20. Utah's second-highest classification had a very good weekend.

Orem Is a 5A School. It Had the Ball, Down Six, Against the No. 8 Team in America.

SPIN results card reading STATEMENT over a photo of St. Thomas Aquinas players in white and gold, with the final score No. 12 St. Thomas Aquinas 38, No. 16 DeSoto 14.

DeSoto had not played a game yet this season. It got on a plane, flew from Texas to Broward County, and ran into a team that had already had a week to warm up. St. Thomas Aquinas won 38-14.

This was our No. 12 against our No. 16, one of the better matchups anyone put on a schedule this August, and it stopped being a matchup somewhere in the first half. Aquinas scored heavily early and DeSoto spent the rest of the afternoon trying to make the scoreboard lie.

Aquinas is 2-0. It opened the season by beating Western 42-0 on August 21 and has now scored 80 points in two games while giving up 14, all of them on Saturday. DeSoto is 0-1 and has to fly home and start over, which is the risk every program takes when it schedules a national opener on someone else's field.

It is worth being precise about what DeSoto is, because 0-1 will follow it around for a week. This is a Texas program that gets ranked in the national top 20 before it has played a snap, and it agreed to open in Florida against a team that does this every year. Losing that game by 24 is a real result. Refusing to schedule it would have been a different kind of statement.

Saturday was a strange day for the state of Florida hosting people. A few hours away, Bishop Gorman came in as our No. 2 team in the country and lost to Columbus, a team not ranked in our fifty. Two national visitors, two losses, one afternoon. The difference is that Columbus was the surprise and Aquinas was not.

Aquinas has not lost yet and has not been tested in a way that tells us much. Beating a top 20 team by 24 is the sort of thing that moves a board, and it will. What it does not do is answer the only question that matters for a program at this level, which is what happens in November.

Our No. 12 handled our No. 16 in the Broward County Showcase, on the same Saturday Bishop Gorman lost in Florida.

DeSoto Went to Florida for Its Opener. St. Thomas Aquinas Won by 24.

SPIN results card reading UPSET over a photo of a Columbus player in a blue number 1 jersey, with the final score Columbus 33, No. 2 Bishop Gorman 28.

Bishop Gorman came to Florida on Saturday with a chance at the top line in the country and left it in Fort Lauderdale. Columbus, unranked in the SPIN National Top 50, beat the Gaels 33-28.

Our own board framed this game a week ago as Gorman's shot at No. 1. The Gaels were No. 2, 2-0, and the only team in the top ten with a win over another top ten team. Columbus was not in the fifty. It is now the answer to what happens when a very good Florida program gets a national opponent on its own side of the country and does not blink.

A'Mir Sears was the reason for most of it. Sears finished with three interceptions and two touchdowns, which is the kind of line that does not happen against teams like this. He transferred to Columbus from West Broward, committed to Miami on July 31, and reclassified out of the 2028 class into 2027 that same month, skipping his senior year entirely. Rivals rates him the No. 10 player in that class and the No. 2 cornerback in it. On Saturday he played both ways for four quarters and was the best player on a field that had a great many of them.

Columbus led 7-0 after a quarter and 23-15 at the half, and the shape of the night was set early. The Explorers ran the football at a Gorman defense that spent the past week being told it was among the best in the country, and it kept working. On the other side, Columbus got pressure on Ace Amina from the front and took away everything behind it. Amina had spent eight days as the reason Gorman beat St. John Bosco. He spent Saturday getting hit and throwing into a secondary that was waiting.

The one thing Gorman got loose in the first half was a 74-yard touchdown from Amina to freshman Michael Blackmond on the last play before the break, a jump over a defender and then nothing but grass. Amina also found tight end Trent Walker from nine yards out. Beyond that there was very little.

Neither team scored in the third. Columbus pushed the lead to 33-15 with under eight minutes left, and at that point it was over in every way except the clock.

Then Gorman remembered what it is. The Gaels scored, recovered an onside kick, and scored again, the second on a catch in the corner of the end zone by Azavier McDaniel, a senior cornerback committed to UNLV who spent the night playing receiver. The extra point made it 33-28 with 1:12 to go. Columbus recovered the second onside kick and ran out the clock.

The night took most of the afternoon to happen at all. Kickoff was set for 2 p.m. Eastern and did not come until three, after lightning in the area pushed back warmups twice. The game stopped again in the first quarter, with 8:21 on the clock, when the horn went off as Gorman punted. Florida rules require a delay for any strike within ten miles.

Thirteen unanswered points at the end do not undo the eighteen that came before them. Columbus was the better team on Saturday in the ways that are hardest to argue with. It ran the ball at a defense that could not stop it, and it made the best quarterback it will see this season look ordinary for three quarters. Gorman is 2-1 and will be favored in nearly everything left on its schedule. It will also spend a week answering for a game it came here to win.