Above, San Gorgonio’s Malik James (7) and Nate Meadors (5) celebrate after a touchdown in a 55-7 win over Cajon in the first round of the CIF-SS Inland Division playoffs on Friday.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and meaning to write about the similarities between San Gorgonio’s 2014 football team and the Kaiser baseball team last spring.
I’m not trying to say that I think San Gorgonio will come up short of a CIF-SS championship, like Kaiser did last spring.
But stay with me:
Both teams have been good programs for the last few years, but Kaiser’s baseball class of 2014 and San Gorgonio’s class of 2015 have been their best classes in years: starters as sophomores, Division I talents by their senior seasons.
Both aren’t helped by their league, which they dominated, San Gorgonio outscored San Andreas League opponents by a 327-13 score. Kaiser baseball outscored Sunkist League opponents 155-17.
Both teams upgraded their nonleague schedules to better prepare them for the playoffs.
Both teams are/were good but won’t be nearly as good next year.
Now the difference is that while Kaiser had the difficult task of being the favorite/No. 1 seed in the CIF-SS playoffs, San Gorgonio, 9-1 entering the playoffs, isn’t even seeded. And the Spartans are in a division that they were promoted to presumably because the Spartans made the CIF-SS semifinals last year and new SAL teams Rim of the World and Jurupa Hills won CIF-SS titles in lower divisions the last two years.San Gorgonio doesn’t want to duplicate what Kaiser did in the spring: lose before winning a CIF-SS title, and I’m not saying that they will. But regardless of whether they win or lose, San Gorgonio’s football class of 2015 should be appreciated much like Kaiser’s baseball class of 2014, as a remarkable group with bright futures in college.

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