Strathmore dominates to win a second CIF state football title. ‘Can go home and party’
.jpg "Strathmore High celebrates a CIF Division 7-A state title after a 42-7 victory over Bell Gardens at Pasadena City College on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2023.")
Forget about leaving the Valley a day ahead of a high school football state championship game in Southern California.
Strathmore High coach Jeromy Blackwell decided his team would wait to jump on the bus for the roughly 2 1/2-hour trip until game day Saturday and has a good explanation as to why.
There’s no arguing with the effectiveness of the travel strategy. The Spartans were all business at Pasadena City College, rolling to a 42-7 victory over Bell Gardens in a California Interscholastic Federation Division 7-A title game.
“I don’t want to take any credit for it,” Blackwell said. “but we didn’t come down the night before like everybody else and stay in hotels because I didn’t want it to be a pleasure cruise or vacation. We woke up this morning like we’re going to work at 4 and we bused out at 5:30 a.m. and came assassin style. Now we can go home and party in Strathmore.”
The Spartans played without leading rusher Jacob Poole who suffered an injury last week.
But Gerardo Ruiz led the way for the Spartans, scoring five touchdowns. He finished the game with 17 carries for 225 yards.
Ruiz said he didn’t want to let the team down.
“It feels surreal something you only dream of,” Ruiz said. “It’s a team game. I just ran my heart out trying to help my team and they stepped up a lot to give us opportunities to capitalize.”
Strathmore’s defense also got it done with a fumble recovery on Bell Gardens’ first play of the game.
The Spartans stopped the Lancers near the goal line in the first quarter.
“Our defense has played lights out for a solid seven weeks,” Blackwell said.
The Spartans now take home their second state title hardware. Strathmore won its first in 2017 with a victory over Orange.
Winning another feels the same as 2017, Blackwell said.
“To win the last football game of any season is gratifying,” he said.
Bryson Bias helped with the scoring when he crossed into the end zone after a 6-yard run.
“The things we went through this season and all the hard work we put in over the year finally paid off,” Bias said.
“We started the season off really slow, but once we got going, no one could stop us.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2023 at 3:27 PM.
