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Dijon Stanley, Granada Hills football look to run its way to a CIF State title

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Dijon Stanley, Granada Hills football look to run its way to a CIF State title

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Granada Hills Charter High’s most famous alum is John Elway, a two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback who threw for 300 touchdowns and well over 50,000 yards in his career.

Well before the NFL superstardom, Elway dazzled as a Highlander, throwing for more than 5,000 yards and nearly 50 touchdown passes in his high school career before graduating in 1979.

More than 43 years later, things at Granada Hills have changed.

The 2022 edition of the Highlanders (12-2) have passed just seven times all season. Not one attempt was caught. Despite not completing a pass, Granada Hills has marched its way to 12 wins, including a City Section Division I title, a SoCal Regional championship, and a berth to Saturday evening’s CIF State Division 4-A title game at San Marin High (12-2) at 6 p.m.

The opposition knows what’s coming. Clearly, it doesn’t matter.

“We put a premium on execution,” coach Bucky Brooks said. “If you execute, it doesn’t matter if the other team knows it’s coming.”

Not only does the other team know the run is coming, but it’s also not hard to predict which player will get the ball. Utah-commit Dijon Stanley has tallied a mind-boggling 2,670 yards and 32 touchdowns this season. He’s gained more than 100 yards in every game this season.

In the City final he torched Palisades for 378 yards and five scores. In the regional final, he racked up 278 yards and four touchdowns.

Granada Hills’ Dijon Stanley making his mark in honor of fallen cousin

“I feel that I’m able to be impactful because of the schemes we run,” Stanley said. “It’s like boxing, everyone knows that you’re going to get hit, you just don’t know when.”

If the ball isn’t in Stanley’s hands, a majority of the time, it’s in his little cousin’s hands, sophomore Darrell Stanley, who rushed for 1,294 yards and 19 touchdowns this season.

“We have other weapons, so they can’t just focus on me,” Dijon added.

Senior tailback DJ Richmond (694 yards, 10 TDs) and freshman Isaac Delgado (287, 5 TDs) round out the foundation of a rushing offense that has piled up 5,918 total yards on 620 carries this season.

Brooks, who played in the NFL as a corner and return specialist from 1994 to 1998 and won a Super Bowl in 1997 with the Green Bay Packers, led Granada Hills to its first City title since 1987.

“Special players make the X’s and O’s pop,” Brooks said.

Brooks has helped Granada Hills ‘pop’ to a historic mark. The program has never been to a CIF State championship, but we all know what Granada Hills is going to do when it gets there: run.

“I’m grateful,” Dijon said. “Me and my team are really blessed to even be in this position because our school has never been this far. Now, our only focus is winning the last game (of the season), because that’s how we want the 2023 class to be remembered.”

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