Can Raines close 2024 football season with a state title?

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Duval and Dade County showdown will bring down the curtains on the high school football season and Raines expects nothing less than to live up to its nickname on Saturday night.

In order to truly be “Ichiban,” the Japanese word for the best or No. 1, Raines (13-0) needs to get past Miami Northwestern (11-2) at FIU’s Pitbull Stadium. The Vikings are chasing the fourth state championship in the program’s decorated history. It’s the final game of the 2024 season in Florida and the Vikings would like nothing more than to stamp it with the exclamation point of a Class 3A state title.

Raines and head coach Donovan Masline are keeping things in perspective. It’s the biggest stage in the sport and it’s not often that local teams get to this stage. Among the News4JAX Florida coverage region that includes more than 60 schools, only 21 have reached an FHSAA state championship game. Fourteen have won championships. In the Vikings’ decorated history, this marks just their sixth title game appearance.

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With all the hype and pageantry around the event, Masline has kept one point front and center — when the game kicks off at 7:30, it’s just a regular football game.

“I kind of think that’s what it is. We want to come in the game thinking, yeah, just another game, but at the same time, you know, it’s way bigger than what it is,” said Raines quarterback Timothy Cole. “It’s way bigger than just another game. We know the stage. We know what’s at stake. We’re just excited to be there and get it done.”

Masline, promoted to replace Deran Wiley in 2020, had taken the Vikings to the playoffs in each of his seasons. But Raines had never been past the regional final round before under Masline prior to last Friday’s 28-23 win over Sarasota Booker. For Masline, that’s been the result from years of hard work.

“It’s almost indescribable. Just to be around these young men, to see most of them grow from 13-14, year olds and they’re 17-18, year olds now,” Masline said. “Just to see the body change, the mindset change, the mentality change, and to see where they’re at right now, you know, going after their first state title as a group, and I’m excited for what they’re going to do.”

Cole, who transferred from Ribault before the season, said the coaching staff was up front with the team last spring. If the Vikings invested the work in the process there was no ceiling on what they could achieve.

“During the spring, during the summer, everybody that came in, we all had one goal and that was to get to this moment we’re at now. Just coming in, being disciplined, taking all the knowledge that we’ve been given and just applying it to the field, to the classroom, off the field, the leadership that everybody has came together in place, the maturity levels,” Cole said. “There’s just a lot of things that have went on this spring and this summer and hopefully we can get it done and win a state championship.”

That meant newcomers had to be receptive to playing a role they may not have been asked to play before. The returnees had to be welcoming to the new talent coming in. And when Raines put all that together on the field, it has been fun to watch.

Linebacker Micah Merritt said that the infusion of new players alongside what Raines already had lit a fire for this season’s team to be great. Through 13 games, the Vikings have been just that.

“We’ve been talking about this since spring and getting going, and the job’s not finished. The job is to win state,” Merritt said. “And that’s what we’re doing, preparing for it, to win.”

Raines has been unbeaten at this point of the season just once before, 1997. First-year head coach Welton Coffey led the Vikings to a 15-0 season and a 32-27 win over Belle Glade Glades Central. Titles followed again in 2017-18 under Wiley. Masline was an assistant on those title teams and would love nothing more than to lead Vikings Nation to another crown. Twice before Raines has been denied in the title game by a Miami school, first in 1973 by Hollywood Hills and in 2015 by Miami Booker T. Washington.

“We knew it was either going to be Miami Central or Miami Northwestern, so we geared ourselves up for that through our preparation all season. It’s just going to take us just doing what we’ve been doing all year, make our corrections and our adjustments in game, match the intensity, or, you know, not necessarily matching, but set the intensity, set the tone early,” Masline said. “And you know, we’re coming down there with a mission. We’re not going to back down from anybody … We’re excited to go down, compete at a high level.”