Pitman High first-year head coach Braden Plaa (left) and his father, Downey High of Modesto head coach Jeremy Plaa, were both glad their first father-son matchup on Friday night in Turlock is over. Photos: Mark Tennis.
Several father-son head coaching combos we’ve known over the years in California high school football did not want to go through playing each other’s teams, but there was a rare one played on Friday in Turlock in which dad’s team at Downey of Modesto blanked first-year head coach son’s team from Pitman of Turlock. Go inside to see why these two may be playing each other every year for awhile.
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Almost as soon as 26-year-old Braden Plaa was named as the new head coach for the 2025 season at Pitman High in Turlock, the questions about Braden having to play his dad Jeremy Plaa’s team at Downey of Modesto began to come up. The two schools are in the same league. The local Turlock Journal newspaper quickly dubbed the game that was played on Friday night at Turlock High the Plaa Bowl.
In the first Plaa Bowl, Downey flexed its superior size in the second half to record a 28-0 win over Pitman after neither team did much in a 0-0 first half.
Jeremy has been the head coach at Downey for 19 years and his last three teams have won 10 games, including first-round CIF Sac-Joaquin Section D1 playoff wins the past two seasons. He wanted to know last summer how many fathers have had to coach against a son’s team that we have ever heard about in California history. It’s impossible to know an exact number, but our estimate is only between 10 and 15.
Downey head coach Jeremy Plaa shakes his son’s hand after Friday’s win over Pitman of Turlock. Photo: Mark Tennis.
The Plaas, especially Braden, have embraced the concept. The two men were not focused on any uncomfortable feelings during Friday’s game. They were completely into their teams and their players and what they needed. There was no long embrace afterward, either, just a simple handshake like Jeremy has done for all of his years after games at Downey and before that at Gustine and Modesto and that Braden has done after the six previous games he has coached.
“No, no as a competitor you want to play the best and around here my dad’s team happens to be one of the best,” said Braden when asked about any hesitation in playing Downey after he accepted the head coaching job. “He out-coached me tonight and we’ll learn from it.”
The more uncomfortable feelings in father-son matchups like the one on Friday may be the ones experienced by the wife and mother. For Brooke Plaa, however, there was never a plan to wear some sort of half-outfit with Downey colors on one side and Pitman colors on the other.
“My allegiance is to Downey because I’m also a teacher there and I’m a Downey grad,” she said in a pregame interview before she took her usual seat in the end zone helping with the filming of plays. “It’s just great to have my son getting started with his career at such a good school and with a good staff.”
Brooke also had a pregame premonition that was spot on for the first half.
“Braden knows all the nuances in and out and everything that my husband’s team does all the time, and he knows everything about Braden,” she said. “There may not be many points scored.”
That proved to be correct despite both teams that have scored 42 and 45 points in games earlier this season. The Pride had one drive in the first quarter stopped at the Downey 15-yard line. And the Knights almost scored right at the end of the first half but ran out of time and couldn’t get a play off after a completed pass to the 3-yard line.
It didn’t take long in the third quarter for Downey to score the first points of the game. Junior running back Elias Haynes broke off runs of 22 and 19 yards on the first two plays after the Knights’ forced a quick 3-and-out for Pitman to start for the quarter. Haynes then took another carry 33 yards for a touchdown.
Downey had a long drive on its second possession of the half stopped on a fourth down play, but the Pride immediately fumbled on their first play to give the momentum right back. Then on the first play after the fumble, junior quarterback Julian Masaniai threw a pass to senior receiver Chris Cannon, who made the catch after a Pitman defender just missed an interception and had a 26-yard touchdown.
In the fourth quarter, Downey senior running back Bryant Mendes had touchdown runs of 34 and 2 yards to cement the victory.
“It was fun to be a part of it,” Haynes said. “Yes, we knew about our coach and theirs. It added an extra layer of excitement.”
Bryant Mendes rushed for two fourth quarter touchdowns as Downey of Modesto pulled away from Pitman for the 28-0 win. Photo: Mark Tennis.
Both teams and both coaches know that the team to beat in their local Central California Conference remains Turlock High despite the Bulldogs having four losses against a strong schedule. Downey improved to 4-3 overall while the Pride fell to 4-3. Pitman already has won more games this season since the 2018 season when Tom Tyler resigned after 10-1 season.
“Last Sunday, when he came over for dinner, it also was my daughter’s birthday so there was not a lot of talk about this game,” Jeremy Plaa said during a post-game interview. “I’m sure this week when he comes over we’ll break it down more and hopefully we’ll learn from each other to play Turlock. His team is playing them next.”
Jeremy also sounded like a proud dad at times and like a football coach working to get a young team with a lot of junior starters plus 210-pound sophomore banger Mark Sanchez ready for the final regular season games.
“It’s a whole different atmosphere over there (at Pitman),” the older Plaa said. “I’m a little glad that the week is over, but it was a hard-fought game and I’m proud of him.”
As for the 0-0 halftime tie, Jeremy earlier said: “I think the familiarity did happen. We also were just killing ourselves with penalties. We just imposed our will in the second half.”
“The week leading into it was fine,” said Braden, who played at Downey for his dad and graduated from the school in 2017. “We prepped about as well as we could. We just had a lot of miscues in the second half. We are trying to create culture shift here.”
The younger Plaa also was previously the freshman coach at Downey and became the JV head coach at Pitman after he was hired as a teacher at the school. The team had 2-8, 3-7, 2-8 and 3-6 records the past four seasons since the pandemic. Plaa earned his full-time teaching credential at Cal State Stanislaus in just six years after high school graduation.
In talking with Jeremy before the game, he got a sparkle in his eyes when mentioning the possibility of Downey and Pitman being in different leagues in future years. That can happen in any CIF section with reclassification. With his son being so young and him obviously not yet close to a retirement year and the schools being of similar size and now competitively closer, the Plaa Bowls in the Stanislaus District may not be ending any time soon.
More on Father-Son Coaching Matchups
Dad Rick Curtis of Crean Lutheran and son Sean Curtis of Mission Viejo Capistrano Valley are shown at the game in which their teams played earlier this season. Photo: Crean Lutheran shutterbugs / For OCSportsZone.
The dads are now 2-0 this season in these types of games. While they are indeed pretty rare, there was one earlier this season in Orange County with dad Rick Curtis and team at Crean Lutheran of Irvine defeating son Sean Curtis and his team at Capistrano Valley of Mission Viejo, 23-6. Rick’s team is still unbeaten after Friday at 7-0 and has been inside the overall State TOP 50 rankings. Sean’s team hasn’t lost since that night and moved to 6-1 on Friday with a 42-0 win against Cypress.
Orange County also had one of the most well-known matchups we’ve ever written about in 2008 with a father-son when Tesoro of Las Flores with head coach Brian Barnes (the son) defeated Los Alamitos, 23-7, with head coach John Barnes (the dad). Tesoro went on to a 13-1 season in which it lost in the CIF Southern Section Pac-Five title game to Long Beach Poly. John Barnes retired in 2015 with 323 career wins, still sixth on the all-time state list.
In the Bay Area, longtime Milpitas head coach Kelly King Sr. never played his son Kelly King Jr.’s team at Leland of San Jose when those two were both coaching those teams in recent years. Journalist Darren Sabedra did remember that in the 1990s Del Mar of San Jose’s Ray Andree coached against his son, John Andree, who was the head coach at the time at Gunderson of San Jose. Ray died of cancer in 1996, then his son took over at Del Mar and in its first season after the son succeeded the dad the son’s team won the CIF Central Coast Section D3 title.
While the Bruichs never played each other in the Inland Empire, longtime journalist Eric-Paul Johnson of the Riverside Press-Enterprise mentioned that dad Steve Randall from Colony of Ontario and son Justin Randall from Carter of Rialto matched wits during games in the 2018 and 2019 seasons. In 2007, Ontario Christian’s Chris Stevens (the son) also went up against Laing Stevens of Calvary Murrieta (the dad).
Another legendary coach to once play against his son’s team was Vista’s Dick Haines from the CIF San Diego Section. Dick’s team at Vista played Torrey Pines of San Diego in 1985 when the Falcons were led that season by Rik Haines, Dick’s son. The sons of John Carroll from Oceanside and the late Herb Meyer from El Camino of Oceanside also have been coaches, but in those cases they never played each other.
Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle.
