FOLSOM, Calif. (KTXL) – Youth sports in Sacramento County are now allowed to start playing games again.

“Our whole team was just super pumped, super excited, just filled with joy,” Folsom High School football player Justin Eklund told FOX40.

Eklund is a linebacker for the school’s varsity team.

As of Tuesday, Folsom has six games scheduled, less than a normal year.

“A lot of guys are in the situation where they are on the verge of getting a scholarship to a school and they are going to use football to go to college and get a better education so even one game or a quarter of a game helps out everyone,” explained Folsom High School head football coach Paul Doherty.

Doherty said he never lost faith they would play while also being impressed with his players’ work ethic not knowing what the future would hold.

“And the most encouraging piece, and I have told other people before, it’s just the maturity of our kids,” Doherty said. “I mean our kids had to go through some rough patches.”

In Elk Grove, it’s more of step-by-step process.

TJ Ewing is the head football coach at Monterey Trail High School.

“We are not in pads right now,” Ewing said. “We are just practicing like they let us, so that’s cool. At least we are practicing football.“

Ewing told FOX40 that his team hasn’t been given the OK by its district to start using pads for practice which is significant because rules require more than a week of padded practices before a team’s first game.

Ewing said he and his players are taking it all in stride.

“We just focus on what we can control and that’s kind of what our mantra has been this whole time,” Ewing said.

Whatever games teams are able to play this season will be it. There will be no playoffs in 2021.

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