The Pacific Coast High School playoffs start up Friday as Jesuit plays Capital High School from Idaho, and Dixon takes on Snow Canyon.

This is Capital’s second win in Idaho and their first foray into the Pacific Coast playoffs.

Jesuit is coming off an outstanding regular season that saw them win the Sacramento varsity league and defeat Dixon, the second-best single-school team in Northern California, 35-21.

That scoreline was most impressive for Dixon, especially given that Jesuit went on to win the Northern California combined U19/HS playoffs last weekend.

Jesuit won a close match over San Mateo 20-12 and then held off SFGG 34-19 the next day.

“Dixon is a very good team, and those playoff games were a huge challenge for us,” said Jesuit Head Coach John Shorey. “We’d won many games by a pretty big margin, so to get these tough matches at this time is good for our players. San Mateo is big and physical, and SFGG is very well coached and has a lot of talent.”

Chris Fry was a hero for Jesuit against SFGG, scoring two tries, including one where the big lock outran almost everyone else on the field to score. Center Patrick Barrientes has been dominant at center, while No. 8 Michael Bush has also stepped up.

Not to discount Snow Canyon, Dixon or Capital (whose coach, Matt Jacobsen, played with Shorey at Sacramento State), but Jesuit seems to be on role at the moment. In their league games leading into last weekend they averaged a scoreline of 52-8.

“We know it’s going to be tougher now,” said Shorey. “We won’t be able to hit many home runs off first phase. We will have to work harder at it. But that’s OK. Last year the way things were structured, we didn’t play for three weeks before nationals and it hurt us. This time, if we make it, we will have had a lot more tough games.”