Top 10 Lamorinda High School Football Players 2022

Top 10 Lamorinda High School Football Players 2022

These are my rankings for the top high school football players in the Lamorinda area for the 2022 season. The three Lamorinda high schools are Acalanes, Campolindo, and Miramonte. These rankings are for varsity sports only.

Top 10 High School Lamorinda Football Players 2022

  1. Dashiell Weaver (Sr.) | 6’0” • 170 lbs | (QB) Campolindo High School, Moraga, CA)— 2,672 Passing Yards, 30 Passing TD, 475 Rushing Yards, 5 Rushing TD, 3,147 Total Yards
  2. Luke Duncan (Sr.) | 6’5” • 195 lbs | (QB) Miramonte High School, Orinda, CA— 2,850 Passing Yards, 36 Passing TD, 98 Rushing Yards, 2,948 Total Yards
  3. Ethan Torres (Sr.) | 6’0” • 155 lbs | (DB/WR) Acalanes High School, Lafayette, CA— 29 Tackles, 6 Interceptions, 1 Fumble Recovery, 40 Receptions, 775 Receiving Yards, 9 TD
  4. Sulley Bailey (Jr.) | 6’1” • 180 lbs | (QB) Acalanes High School, Lafayette, CA— 1,832 Passing Yards, 16 Passing TD, 79 Rushing Yards, 2 Rushing TD, 1,893 Total Yards
  5. Robbie Mascheroni (Sr.) | 6’4” • 200 lbs | (WR) Campolindo High School, Moraga, CA— 1,022 Receiving Yards, 17 TD
  6. Trevor Rogers (Jr.) | 6’3” • 185 lbs | (WR) Acalanes High School, Lafayette, CA)— 1,120 Receiving Yards, 15 TD
  7. Justin Zargarowski (Sr.) | 6’2” • 190 lbs | (LB) Acalanes High School, Lafayette, CA— 53 Tackles, 8.5 Sacks, 1 Interception, 1 Fumble Recovery, 1 Forced Fumble
  8. Nathan Bennett (Sr.) | 6’0” • 165 lbs | (LB) Acalanes High School, Lafayette, CA— 44 Tackles, 8 Sacks, 3 Forced Fumbles
  9. Charlie Murrin (Sr.) | 6’1” • 190 lbs | (LB) Campolindo High School, Moraga ,CA— 68 Tackles, 7 Sacks, 1 Fumble Recovery
  10. Jack Giorgianni (Jr.) | 5’10” • 180 lbs | (LB) Acalanes High School, Lafayette, CA— 93 Tackles, 1 Sack, 1 Interception

Campolindo vs Acalanes (10/14/22)

Video provided by 49ers Cal-Hi & Sac-Hi Sports

Acalanes vs Miramonte (10/28/22)

Video provided by 49ers Cal-Hi & Sac-Hi Sports

The Benefits of Strength and Conditioning For Young Athletes

From youth to adulthood, strength and conditioning programs are a fundamental part of developing your athleticism, physical health and wellbeing. More research is being done that shows how training should begin as early as a child starts playing organized sports. This is typically around the ages 7 or 8. Some of the main benefits of strength and conditioning programs are increased strength, speed, and agility and it reduces the chances of sustaining an injury.

Most people wonder if strength training at a young age will stunt or hinder a person’s growth rate. There hasn’t been any evidence to prove this theory to be true. It’s just a myth. However, there are different stages of training youth athletes and there’s no need to rush into training with heavy weights. During the early stages of a person’s training exercises should be selected with the intent to teach certain functional movement patterns, like squatting, lunging and hinging.

The best age to start serious weight training is between 10 and 15 years old. Everyone has a different growth trajectory based on their genetics and the time that they hit certain levels of maturity. Gaining muscle mass will lead to more gains in strength, speed, and agility. Testosterone levels play a key role in gaining strength and growing muscle mass. Boys will have higher testosterone levels than girls, which is why they are usually bigger, stronger, and faster. The accumulation of the testosterone hormone comes in large during the ages when puberty hits.

Studies have shown that young boys on a consistent training plan have potential to gain strength, speed, and aerobic endurance year after year during the ages of 12 and 15. Girls have also shown ability to develop athletically during these years. However, the girls rate of athletic development is much less than boys due to them having more estrogen as opposed to testosterone. Estrogen is a hormone that tends to increase the amount of fat in a persons body. This is why young girls will develop speed, strength, and aerobic endurance at a lesser rate than their male counterparts whose hormones constantly produce muscle growth.

I also find this to be true in my personal experience. I grew up doing martial arts which gave me a strong foundation of strength exercises that were mainly body weight movements. I got my first weight set when I was about 12 years old, a couple years after I started playing organized tackle football. It was a basic barbell with sand weight plates. I pumped those weights all the time. My goal was to get bigger muscles to protect myself from all of the impact of tackling that football was placing on my body. I didn’t really know what I was doing. It was only a couple of exercises that I really knew how to do at that age. Barbell shoulder press and bicep curls.

Football pictures showing different stages of growth (Left: San Leandro Crusaders age 10; Right: University of Idaho age 18).

Despite the limited exercise selection, my body was still able to adapt to the constant training and I started to grow bigger and stronger. Over time I would develop a more complete training regimen and become the strongest player in my position on my high school and college football teams. This is why I always credit consistency to being the key to success.

Conclusion

Training is almost always going to be beneficial (except for overtraining). It is best to get familiar with exercise early while a person is still in their youth stages of development. The prime time to be developing athletic ability is during the teenage years because an athlete will have a spike in his or her hormone levels due to puberty, which will result in muscle growth and gains in strength, speed, and agility.

Lee’s Fitness Unlimited Podcast Episode 2: Dat Man Dooley Interview

Check out this interview with my friend Abdul Iscandari aka Dat Man Dooley. It is also available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and all other podcasting platforms.

Listen here

The Difference Between Strength and Power

The Difference Between Strength and Power

Strength and power, as much as the two sounds similar, are actually very different. 

If you’ve had an argument in the gym, the ring or even the bar that the two cannot be interchanged, you’ll be happy to know that you’re not in the wrong. 

Strength and power, although are often used as synonyms are far from it and when we dive into the definitions – it’s easy to understand the difference and how to measure the pair. We’ve compared and contrasted the two so that you don’t have to keep on googling and trawling the web. 

Muscle Strength

If we’re going to get scientific about it, muscle strength is defined as the maximum amount of force that a muscle can exert against a form of resistance in one single effort. This is what you expect from a traditional conversation about maximum strength and the one rep max effort.

Testing muscle strength is usually in the form of a variety of compound or olympic lifts with the maximum load in a single lift classifying muscle strength. Whether that comes in the form of maximum bench press, squat, deadlift or power clean, there’s plenty of exercises used as standards for measurements. 

Strength training is heavily weight related with a focus on low reps and numerous sets with personalized and custom training plans depending on the areas of strength improvements required. If the strength improvement is required for the squat for example, more heavy squats are to be cleverly implemented into a routine for development in the area. 

So put simply, strength is the maximum load that our bodies can press, lift or push for a single repetition. 

Muscle Power

Muscle power on the other hand is defined as the product of dynamic muscular force and muscle contraction velocity. When measuring power, the speed at which the muscle contracts is multiplied with the force is exerts.

With recent research from Tufts University, we now know that power is a much better indicator when compared to strength for a number of performance tasks and athletic movements. Power is required for every sport under the sun, whether that’s football, golf and even darts – to an extent. 

Training for power can include plyometrics such as depth jumps, hurdles, lateral hops etc. Of course power training does depend on the sport chosen and the requirements on the body that the specific sports request.  

Simply put, power is the combination of force and speed and so does require strength to be more effective.

The takeaway

To conclude, strength is the maximum load that can be lifted, pushed or pulled for a single repetition whereas power is the speed at which muscles contract multiplied by the force produced. Power therefore requires strength to be effective and to build movements in athletic performance. 

Training for strength requires a clever implementation of low rep, high set exercising with a focus on compound movements. When focusing on power, bodyweight and lower weight plyometrics with speed can be implemented into a routine for improvements in power.