Sacramento Toughness Spurred Three Bears Into Bigger Roles

Jordan Kunaszyk, Kyle Wells, and Gavin Reinwald have a few things in common.

First, they were relatively unheralded coming out of high school and junior college, Kunaszyk and Reinwald as two-star recruits, Wells as a walk-on. Second, they've all been pushed into bigger roles, with Kunaszyk starting in the wake of Devante Downs' injury, Reinwald not-redshirting due to Ray Hudson's injury, and Wells filling the run blocking area of what Hudson would have done. Third and most importantly to them, they're all from the Sacramento area.

"Not a lot of people get out of the 916," Reinwald noted, "especially for football. We're all proud of being from Sacramento."

Despite the closeness of the state's capital city and names like Worrell Williams, Syd'Quan Thompson, Jeremy Ross, and Steven Moore having success at Cal, recruiting efforts have fallen off over the past few years, with the Bears staff targeting other regions more in recruiting, but is beginning to shift under Justin Wilcox, as they try to capitalize on a talent pool right in their backyard.

"I think it's a very underrated talent pool area," Wells, from Del Oro, said, " I think what's unique about it is that all the best schools are public schools, so it's not like Southern California where you've got Mater Dei, St. John Bosco, it's all public schools. You've got Elk Grove, Del Oro, Rocklin, Folsom, Oak Ridge, and it's a lot of homegrown talent."

"Even if you look at junior colleges in the area," Reinwald, from Elk Grove, added, "Sac City and American River, they're both top six in California for junior colleges, and all those kids are from the Sac-area. I'd say it's slept on, there's definitely a lot of kids who can compete and ball out there that I've played against."

That's a point Kunaszyk echoed and vindicates to an extent. Kunaszyk, a product of Roseville HS and a year at American River College, is second on the Bears in tackles currently, with 53 despite only playing in six games, and noted that the American River team he played for had a bunch of FBS talent.

"There's a bunch of kids at my JuCo, we pretty much stay within the Sac-Joaquin Section, and there's people every year who go Division 1. My year we had six kids go, power five conference one and dones. So that shows there's people getting overlooked."

Something Wells brought up was that the area plays a different style of football than a lot of schools in the rest of the state.

"It's a unique brand of football, way more run heavy," Wells said, "it's a lot of tough kids, putting their nose to the grindstone, just getting after it."

It's that attitude and thought process that's led the trio to starting roles on the team this year as well. Wells earned a scholarship, and although he's been what Beau Baldwin called a 'glorified offensive lineman,' he's seen a steady stream of playing time in bigger sets, thanks to his blocking ability. Reinwald has started multiple games at tight end despite being undersized, utilizing strong technique. And Kunaszyk won the Walter Camp National Player of the Week award earlier in the year, and was molded by his experiences playing in the area.

"The Sac-Joaquin section, they run the ball a lot," Kunaszyk said, "and I feel like that's always been a strength of mine, ever since I started playing football I had a natural ability to tackle and stick my nose in there and hit people. I've taken countless amounts of reps (because of that), and all of the reps add up."

The toughness aspect is an area the team is looking to embrace going forward, getting more versatile as they move away from the Air Raid and to bigger sets offensively and getting bigger up front defensively. A part of that will come in the 2018 class, with standouts Will Craig and Evan Tattersall coming in from Granite Bay, and the coaches establishing relationships at area powers Folsom and Jesuit.

The staff is in the process of re-establishing relationships with the Sacramento metro-area schools, which is how they found Reinwald in the first place. It's sure to be a lengthy process, but it has been done before.

"We're the closest FBS school to Sacramento," Wells said, "and I remember growing up everyone was a Cal fan, especially during the heyday with Aaron Rodgers. It's cool being the closest big-time school to Sacramento, everybody tuning in."

That's the level that the Bears hope to return to, rebuilding the connections in the local areas, as Cal looks to make the state capital a prime recruiting territory going forward. It certainly helps to have these guys making the ride along with them.