Staff Writer
Sloane Carter covers high school sports for SPIN, following the athletes, the teams, and the seasons that shape them.
SPIN NorCal Top 10, Week 6. De La Salle and Folsom hold, Central East moves to third, Serra slips to fourth on a week off, and Del Oro of Loomis jumps to sixth.
SPIN Utah Top 10, Week 6. Mountain Ridge won a 95 point game in Temecula. Corner Canyon beat Lone Peak. Ten holds on the board, and three Utah teams sit inside the national top 70.
SPIN Arizona Top 10, Week 6. Basha beat Liberty of Peoria 30-22, Chandler and Pinnacle move up, Brophy and ALA Gilbert North come on after beating board teams, and Centennial of Peoria drops to fifth at 4-0.
Nine SoCal board teams played in Week 6 and six won. Mater Dei lost to Bishop Gorman, Bishop Amat lost to JSerra, and the only loss from inside the ten was Sierra Canyon beating Orange Lutheran.
All ten Arizona board teams played in Week 6 and six won. One loss was Basha beating Liberty of Peoria. The other three were three point losses to teams outside our top ten.
Nine of the ten Utah board teams played in Week 6 and seven won. Lone Peak lost to Corner Canyon and Davis lost to American Fork, and nothing from outside the board touched it.
No. 31 Washington of Massillon at No. 40 St. Edward is at a college stadium in Berea, which is the detail most previews of this game will get wrong.
Pittsburg at No. 43 Mission Viejo puts our fifth ranked NorCal team on the road against a Southern California side that just moved up eleven places.
No. 39 Cherry Creek at Valor Christian is the biggest game in the state, and the visitor has not lost to a Colorado school in almost three years.
Eight wins, one loss by a single point, and the No. 1 team has not played yet
All ten played, two lost, and both defeats came against another team on this board
Nine wins, one loss, and the only defeat came from inside the board
Nine board teams played, eight won, and the one that lost lost by a point to the team ranked below it.
Pinnacle beat Basha by 33, and every Arizona loss this week came against another Arizona board team.
Five shutouts. The other three losers scored exactly seven. Nobody in this state was tested on Friday.
David Gabriel Georges has 445 rushing yards in three games. Trinity has three straight state titles and one four-star. Friday is the collision.
Two 11-win teams that lost regional finals on the same December afternoon, both unbeaten, both in the Texas top five, meeting for the first time in 16 years.
Cardinal Newman has not lost to a Palm Beach County team since September 10, 2021. West Boca has allowed seven points all season and has a four-star headed to Georgia Tech.
The Out West list expanded this week. Six teams are new to it, Northern California and Hawaii are on it for the first time, and Mission Viejo is the only name that left
De La Salle and Folsom carry it. Underneath them the board turned over three places, and one of them came from Fresno
The top of this board barely moved. Everything interesting happened from sixth down
Basha loses the top line it has held since the preseason. Hamilton takes it on a shutout
Damonte Ranch and Coronado are in. Nevada still has exactly one team on the national board
The editor held all ten places. The board underneath the hold is doing more than the chips suggest
Every SPIN regional board's Thursday and Friday, from Corner Canyon's mercy rule to a one-point night in Corona
The widest margin on SPIN's national board this week
42-10 at Murrieta Valley, with Murrieta shut out after halftime
The only game this week putting two SPIN regional boards on the same field went 21-13 to Utah
SPIN's Utah No. 10 won by 48 on the road
Jaxon Pehrson threw five touchdown passes in a 49-0 win over Fremont
NorCal's No. 1 opened its season 35-25 at No. 3 Serra of San Mateo
CJ Wallace's 99-yard kickoff return and a blocked field goal kept SPIN's No. 44 alive at 23-17
Pinecrest Academy Sloan Canyon enters at fourth after beating McQueen in Reno. Palo Verde climbs five, the biggest move on this board.
Nine of the ten played and six won. Every result finished in board order or better, and nobody outside this ten beat anybody inside it.
Skyridge is the biggest riser in the state after we made it the biggest fall a week ago. Herriman gets in after three weeks as first out. Timpview comes off.
Skyridge beat Orem 21-14 on 14 fourth-quarter points, Corner Canyon pushed its two-game margin to 91-21, Mountain Ridge shut out Lehi, and American Fork was within six of Mater Dei in the fourth.
Santa Margarita shut out an Orlando program behind Fletch Palmer's first career start while the rest of the Trinity League went 2-4. St. John Bosco lost in Las Vegas and Orange Lutheran lost by one.
IMG Academy opened its 2026 season with a running-clock 59-3 win over Lone Peak, our Utah No. 2, in Highland. Bishop Gorman visits the same Utah stadium on Sept. 4.
The Huskies won their opener 41-21 at Orange Coast College. What happened after they went up three scores is the part our SoCal board has to read carefully.
SPIN opens the 2026 SoCal Top 10 with St. John Bosco first and reigning state champion Santa Margarita second. Servite at eight is the widest disagreement on the board, and the LA Times has them 15th.
Bishop Gorman shut out Losee in a game lightning ended at halftime. Every other Nevada board team that played in Week 1 lost. Three of those losses cost nothing, because of who they came against. Churchill County, Mater East and Palo Verde take the seats that opened below.
All ten teams on our Utah board played in Week 1. Eight won. Both losses came from inside the top ten, so the board returns with no entries and no exits. Everything else about it changed. American Fork is up four, Skyridge is down four, and six of the ten sit somewhere new.
Utah's top ten finished six for six against outsiders, Nevada finally agreed on the score in Fallon's favor, and California quietly got its season started in Hawaii.
Lightning stopped the game Friday night at 7-5 after one quarter. It ended Saturday at 43-35, on a one-yard touchdown by a lineman with 76 seconds left.
Tropical Storm Lala moved the game up a day and pushed gusts up to 25 mph through Kunuiakea Stadium. The defending Utah 5A champions won 16-7 and barely blinked.
Thirty Clark County programs walked away from the state playoffs. Five of them are on this board. Bishop Gorman is still No. 1 and now has almost nobody left to beat.
Corner Canyon opens No. 1 without Eric Kjar and without all six of its first-team all-staters, two of them SPIN All-Americans. Nine other teams think that's an opening. The season starts Thursday.
Eric Kjar left for Weber State. Casey Sutera came home to replace him. Corner Canyon opens the 2026 season Friday night at Davis, and the national polls still aren't paying attention. That's their mistake.