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PARADISE — The Bobcats marched onto Om Wraith Field on Friday night like an army of hope.
Thirty-five teenage boys dressed in the padded armor of football stepped onto the Paradise High School field to play a game for the first time since a wildland fire struck the town nine months earlier with deadly force.
Thousands of spectators witnessed the tradition-laden procession of varsity players walking down concrete steps through the stands as Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” echoed throughout the stadium. Each player stopped at the top of the stairs and as they went by, punched on a silver plaque that read:
“C.M.F.
11-8-18.”
Residents here like to call themselves Crazy Mountain Folk, with “CMF” plastered on street signs and T-shirts.
They have not forgotten Nov. 8, when red-hot flames in swirling winds became the most deadly wildfire in modern U.S. history. The Camp Fire killed 86 people, destroyed 18,793 structures and burned 153,336 acres.
Almost everyone in the football program was affected by the inferno. Most lost their homes and only three players still live in Paradise, which before the fire had a population of 26,800.
“We’re always going to remember it,” senior quarterback Danny Bettencourt said after the game. “But we’re trying to create good memories from now on.”
Those fond recollections began with a 42-0 drubbing of visiting Williams High.
“This is the beginning of the healing,” said assistant coach Andy Hopper, a bearded, beast of a man who has motivated his players with heartfelt talks about overcoming adversity.
“We’re coming back and we’re coming back stronger than ever,” added Paradise athletic director Anne Stearns.
The crowd swelled to double the size of the 2,000 people who currently live in this Gold Rush-era town nestled in the Sierra foothills east of Chico. The fans honored 40 first responders who walked onto the field before the game, showering them with cheers.
It felt familiar and comforting, said Brian White, a law enforcement officer who still lives in Paradise, and asked not to have his employer identified.
“Like before the fire,” he added.
White and his wife, whose son Blake is a Bobcats lineman, had just returned Friday from Redding where they helped family members prepare to evacuate after a fire started in Shasta County.
In the week leading to the opener, coach Rick Prinz and his assistants had sold the game as just the first in a long string of competitions.
Star running back Lukas Hartley knew better. He threw up twice on the field, he said, because of nerves. He also scored a touchdown in Paradise for the first time in his varsity career.
Bettencourt said he had not slept the previous three nights because of anticipation of the game.
“But I didn’t throw up,” he said, having watched Hartley’s distress on the field.
The emotions could be seen on the faces of 13 alumni who returned to the school to lead the pregame march after their own 8-2 season ended last year in fire and smoke.
They clutched a U.S. flag, a Cal Fire flag and another banner saluting fire victims.
“Being able to walk down one more time, it’s just closure,” said Ezra Gonzales, who will start classes Monday at Butte College where he is a lineman on the football team.
The seeds of the high school team’s victory, on this windless, late-summer night, began months earlier. Prinz gathered 22 players in January on a gravel yard at the school’s temporary location, an office building next to Chico Municipal Airport.
Stearns recalled watching the players preparing for practice when suddenly everyone realized they did not have a football.
“That moment, as tiny as a missing football, put into perspective what was important,” she said.
Bettencourt had a ball in his car trunk, Prinz recalled. Practice saved.
But Prinz said he was not sure a program could be salvaged with 22 players. “I didn’t know if I would have a job next year,” he said. “But we had each other.”
Over the next few months, players returned from far-flung places. Hartley transferred from Woodside, Oregon, where he had been living with his father after the fire, he said. A player returned from Fresno and another came back from San Diego.
By the time the Bobcats dressed Friday in their green-and-gold uniforms, Paradise had 35 willing bodies to fill out the roster. Prinz said he coached 56 players last year.
“These guys kept coming out of nowhere to play,” Prinz said the day before the game.
NFL star Aaron Rodgers, who grew up in Chico and played for Butte College before starring at Cal, bought the program new yellow helmets. Those in the community who found temporary refuge around Butte County offered an outpouring of love.
School officials, however, had to eliminate the freshman program because of a lack of numbers. The current freshmen joined an expanded junior varsity team, which earlier in the day opened the season with a 40-12 victory over Williams.
By May, the Bobcats were training at Marsh Junior High School in Chico. Although the high school was not ravaged by fire, sports teams could not play there because of safety concerns, school officials said.
The football team was allowed to return to Om Wraith this summer. The players found scars of the fire everywhere. The scoreboard had partially melted, the trees that once shaded the stadium from the sun were thinned. Without the trees, fans watched the junior varsity game Friday afternoon in searing heat. At least four people needed medical attention because of the heat, officials said.
Twenty-four hours before kickoff, Prinz addressed his players, who huddled on a field named after a legendary Paradise coach who died in May at 91.
“You have sacrificed to get to this first game,” he told them. “But to get to this first game is not our goal, is it?”
“No!” the players shouted in response.
“We didn’t come all this way to just get here,” Prinz said.
The practice concluded with the players yelling their traditional warning to any team taking them on in Paradise: “DON’T COME TO THE MOUNTAIN!”
Lost in the bravado was how much it took Stearns to schedule a season. With enrollment reduced from about 1,000 to 300 students, Stearns said she canceled the school’s affiliation with the Eastern League and the 2,000-plus students in its schools.
She also had to scramble to find 10 games as an independent. The Bobcats are scheduled to travel 2½ hours north to face Mt. Shasta High School this year. Stearns persuaded Sparks High near Reno to travel over the Sierra to play here.
But she could not find an opponent for the season opener.
“No one wanted to play us,” Stearns said. “No one wanted to lose to Paradise; no one wanted to beat Paradise.”
Sports clothier Under Armour learned about the situation and offered a $5,000 donation to any school willing to open the season against the Bobcats, Stearns said.
Williams, which is located about 90 minutes away off Interstate 5, took the offer.
“It was for a good cause,” said Williams’ Jeff Lemus, who made his varsity coaching debut Friday. “This is much more than football.”
Paul Cronin, longtime coach of Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, understood the sentiment better than most because in 2017 the school was partially destroyed in the Wine Country fires during the season. A handful of his players lost their homes.
Then, last season’s 11-1 team failed to make the Northern Coast Section playoffs after losing a coin flip that was used as a tiebreaker. Officials had to resort to a tiebreaker after so many regular-season games had been canceled because of smoke from the Camp Fire.
Cronin said school officials honored the 2018 team with a sign that was placed in the Cardinals’ stadium. It had the overall record, league championship honors and a saying chosen by the players.
It reads, “Remember Paradise: Fate Intervened.”
