Paradise High team hunts title, hoping to boost community.
PARADISE, Butte County — After his family lost everything in last year’s Camp Fire, Tyler Harrison’s parents and three older sisters moved to San Diego.
He demanded to stay in Chico with his grandmother so he could continue playing football for Paradise High School.
It hasn’t been easy for the 15yearold sophomore. He does his own laundry and often figures out his own meals. He’s responsible for finding a way to a school that’s 30 minutes away, practicing football for three hours, doing his homework and then repeating the process again and again.
Given the tragic circumstances, he believes it’s all worth it.
“It kind of feels like I’m not 15 anymore,” Harrison said.
Harrison, the star running back for Paradise High, is a core example of the vastly displaced community, a town that a year ago was ravaged by the deadliest fire in Califor
“We really want this state championship. We want to do it for our town and for the people that we lost.”
Tyler Harrison, Paradise High running back
nia’s recorded history and is now rallying around the undefeated Bobcats as they eye a state championship.
Paradise (100) will host 82 Live Oak (Sutter County) at 7 p.m. Friday in the first round of the Northern Section’s Division III playoffs. A win would likely set up a match against topseeded West ValleyCottonwood (Shasta County) and keep the Bobcats on the path toward their ultimate goal.
“We really want this state championship,” Harrison said. “We want to do it for our town and for the people that we lost. That’s what drives us.”
Since the Camp Fire raged through the ridge town 90 miles north of Sacramento on Nov. 8, 2018 — killing 85 and leveling an estimated 19,000 structures — the football team has become the model of the community’s resolve.
Much of the debris has been removed from Paradise, and some of the scorched earth has been replaced by mutedyellow pastures. Foliage is returning, and there was even a bear spotted on the school’s track two weeks ago.
“Now Open” signs can be seen waving outside of a handful of businesses, and food trucks can be found consistently in parking lots. But nothing in Paradise feels permanent just yet, and few understand this more than those on the football team.
Surrounded by soot and ash and still traumatized by 25,000 of the town’s 27,000 residents being displaced, the team returned to practice. Twentytwo players showed up at a gravel field behind Chico Municipal Airport in January. None of them had a football. By May, the players were on an actual football field and using multiple footballs at Chico’s Marsh Junior High. By August, the Bobcats hosted a seasonopening home game that few had deemed possible nine months earlier. It turned into a revival.
A crowd of 5,000 squeezed into bleachers designed to hold about 2,500 and then started trickling into end zone lawn chairs and standingroomonly sections. With revered Om Wraith Field and the charred stumps of trees as the backdrop, stirring veneration was paid to those lost and to the first responders as the fans danced, cried and cheered and Paradise beat Williams (Colusa County) 420.
That was just the start. As the Bobcats — who have won 10 section titles but have yet to bring home a state crown — rallied behind a “One Town; One Team; One Family” motto, they trampled opponents during the regular season, outscoring them by an aggregate score of 46973.
The defense had five shutouts and allowed more than a touchdown in only two games. The program’s clockwork wingT offense produced Harrison, who leads the section with 1,837 rushing yards (13.7 per carry) and 21 touchdowns, and Lukas Hartley, a senior who had 1,167 yards (8.8 average) and 18 touchdowns.
Dave Inman, a 68yearold Caltrans retiree whose ADA-accessible home was destroyed in the fire, exemplifies what the team has come to mean to the battered town’s residents.
Despite being forced to live about two hours away in Shasta Lake, Inman has been at every Paradise game this year — home and away. He has charted it all, kept every stat, and stored mementos from the remarkable season.
“This is his way of healing,” Paradise Athletic Director Anne Stearns said. “This is his purpose in life right now. … He’s taken on this huge connection to the football team. People are constantly looking for some ray of hope, and his comes from the football team.”
The team drew immediate attention a year ago, when it was forced to pull out of a firstround playoff game — ending its season. The coaching staff couldn’t even locate all of the players who were scattered throughout Sacramento Valley.
The grieving players were hosted by the 49ers and Warriors, and Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers — who went to Butte College in Chico before moving on to Cal — bought the team new helmets. Hollywood mogul Ron Howard signed on to make a documentary about the town. ESPN spent months producing an episode of E:60, awardwinning Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke has a book in the works, and the Weather Channel and CBS News have done interviews on the story. Shawn Meaike, president of insurance company Family Life First, has promised $25,000 donations twice.
And an anonymous donor is paying for everyone to enter Friday’s playoff game for free. The school is hoping to get 1,000 fans, something that has become gradually more difficult as the season has progressed and the community has been further relocated.
Head coach Rick Prinz was able to move back to Paradise in June, but he’s about the only one from within the program. Two or three players have commutes of only 20 minutes, but for many, the trek is much longer. One of Prinz’s coaches lives in Lincoln, 70 miles south of Paradise. Two players live in Red Bluff, a 2½hourplus round trip every day.
“We’re doing this for so much more than just ourselves,” senior quarterback Danny Bettencourt said. “I feel like a lot of us have helped the community, just by performing the way we are and by showing that we have lots of resilience.”