Photos: Casa Roble rolls past Dixon 41-14 to win Golden Empire League championship

ORANGEVALE, Calif. — With the rise of the CIF State Football Championships in 2006 and with the introduction of the more recent Regional championship games assured for most every section champion, there was one part of the climb that seemed to fade in importance.

A league championship.

In Orangevale, just outside of Sacramento, the Casa Roble Rams set out this fall to win the Golden Empire League championship that narrowly escaped them in 2021. For teams in the small-school Division IV and V levels, this ranks as a big deal.

On Friday night on Senior Celebration Night, the Rams defeated the team that denied them the GEL a year ago, pulling away for a 41-14 victory over Dixon to cap a 9-1 regular season and to snatch the championship outright. Players raced through a tunnel of cheerleaders after the game, right up to the stands to sing some sort of appreciation song. It's hard to be in chorus when you're excessively giddy.

On the topic of the joys of winning the time-treasured league title?

"Oh yeah! Of course they matter!" said an excited, proud and relieved Chris Corner, Casa Roble's sixth-year varsity coach who is affable and game-day dialed in as anyone.

Horner played in the trenches 30 years ago at nearby San Juan High School of the San Juan Unified School District. His last prep game was a regular-season Capital Athletic League finale at Casa Roble. He never anticipated coaching a rival school. He is in his 23rd year with the school and football programs.

Casa Roble will likely earn a top seed in the Sac-Joaquin Section Division IV playoffs which begin next week. Also, Senior Celebration Night wasn't a detour for two sophomores for Casa Roble.

Quarterback Conner Campbell won the varsity job during summer 7-on-7 passing leagues and has backed it up. He passed for 214 yards and two touchdowns to junior receiver Cole Owens, one of the most dynamic and prolific players in the section. The first touchdown strike was of 27 yards and the one to cap the scoring was a 70-yard play where Owens ran past the field, bobbled it for a second and then gathered it in for his 18th touchdown this season. He had 154 yards receiving to give him 1,236 yards this season. He had 10 touchdown catches as a sophomore.

Campbell has passed for 2,243 yards and 32 touchdowns in replacing Jason Lindahl, who was named The Sacramento Bee Small School Player of the Year in 2021.
Big cleats to fill but seamless transition.

"I love my role with this team," the 6-foot-1, 175-pound Campbell said. "It's great having such a great line and receivers. We started the season slow but we're on a roll."

The slow start was an opening-night, two-point loss to Placer-Auburn, which is 10-0 and could be a top two seed in Division III.

Dixon (8-2) was the defending GEL champion and returned talented quarterback Jett Harris, who's position coach, A.J. Bernhardt is an all-time program great at quarterback in the early 1990s and later started at Sacramento State.

Harris passed for 202 yards and had a 10-yard touchdown pass to Brent Green to pull the Rams of Solano County to within 21-7 in the third quarter. Casa Roble countered with another impressive sophomore in running back Braylen Blevins. He rushed for 85 yards in coming off the bench to spell a sore-kneed Josh Taylor, the team's leading rusher and leading nickname guy - "Tarzan" because, as Casa Roble coach Horner explains, "He never misses a chance to be without his shirt."

Taylor opened the scoring with an 8-yard run and had 52 yards before departing, allowing Blevins to sparkle in his varsity debut. He was called up from the junior varsity ranks this week for tailback depth.

"He's a man child," Horner said.

The game's most dramatic defensive play came with 6:31 left in the third quarter with Casa Roble ahead 14-0. Evan Combs intercepted a Harris pass and somehow weaved his way through a sea of Dixon Rams - yes, the same mascot - and reached the end zone. Six Dixon players missed him.

"He's a maniac!" Horner said afterwards, in a complementary way. "That's the craziest thing I've ever seen."

Here are photos from Friday night's game in Orangevale:

Video and photos by Gary Jones