Poly players, from left, Jayon Brown, Lajay Kelly and John “Ju Ju” Smith. Photos by Matt Cohn.

“Like a proud parent,” says Poly defensive coordinator Jeff Turley, when asked to describe how he feels about his young and talented team that has rebounded from a 1-3 pre-season to win ten straight games and wind up in this Friday night’s C.I.F. Division One State Championship game against the Granite Bay Grizzlies. “The lessons they’ve learned in adversity are tremendous,” Turley says. 

Head coach Raul Lara echoes those sentiments. “We’ve definitely seen the dark and the light this year,” he says. “This season has been special.”

The Poly football program is arguably the finest and most accomplished in the United States, and the magnitude of that is not lost on this year’s team. “Being a Poly Jackrabbit is really hard,” says wide receiver and defensive back John “Ju Ju” Smith, standing on a practice field that has absorbed decades of blood, sweat, and tears. “This year, we took the ‘underdog’ role and used it to our advantage,” says Smith. 

Senior defensive end Lajay Kelly attributes the team’s success to the “humble and hungry” attitude the players and coaches maintained not only through the difficult pre-season but also when they began knocking off the top seeds in the C.I.F. playoffs. The Jackrabbits were able to tune out the naysayers (who’ve since jumped back on the bandwagon) and focus on improving.

“It was all about hard weeks of practice, and trusting each other on the field,” says standout linebacker Jayon Brown, who’ll be playing his college ball at UCLA. 

Poly’s smothering defense will definitely have its hands full on Friday night at Home Depot Center: Granite Bay runs the tricky “fly” offense, which employs lots of fakes and misdirection plays. The Grizzlies were able to rack up 547 rushing yards with this offense in a game two weeks ago.

As the Jackrabbits prepare to add to their illustrious legacy, one pre-season game lingers in their memories:  The 56-0 loss to Narbonne, the 2nd-worst defeat in the program’s 104-year-old history. The two teams will meet again next year, but one wonders what a rematch would have looked like right now, after Poly’s big turnaround.

The point is moot since Narbonne competes in the C.I.F. Open Division, and was eliminated by Centennial last weekend.

“It’s too bad they lost,” says Coach Turley. “It would have been great to call them up, invite them to a neutral location, and settle it there,” he says. One senses he’s only half joking.