The bright lights of Hughes Stadium at Sacramento City College shone a little bit brighter for the Elk Grove Thundering Herd Friday night. Championship weekend kicked off with the Sac-Joaquin Section Division II title game between No. 6 Elk Grove and No. 9 Whitney and turned into a track meet for the Thundering Herd and its speedy 5-foot-6, 155-pound quarterback Carter Harris. Harris scored four of Elk Grove's five rushing touchdowns out of the voracious veer offense en route to a 35-0 championship victory over the Wildcats. “Lot of credits to the Whitney coaches,” Elk Grove head coach John Heffernan said after the game. “They are a really well-coached team and the kids play really hard and it's a great opponent.” Perhaps the bounce-back team of the entire section in 2019, Whitney had no answer for Elk Grove on either side of the ball. “The last game of the season is a tough one, you never want to lose the last one,” said Whitney head coach Zac McNally. “But I talked to my boys and that doesn't really define our season. We definitely made some strides as a program and we are looking to build off of that.” Whitney built 2019 from the ground up after a winless 2018 season. The Wildcats stormed out to two opening wins over Paraclete and Placer and picked up a signature win over Del Oro a month later. The regular season finale win over Grant punched Whitney’s ticket to the postseason, where the ‘Cats defeated Lincoln, Rocklin and Jesuit in succession to become the first 9-seed or higher since 2010 to reach the section finals. “It just shows when a group of young men are extremely motivated and extremely dedicated what they can do,” McNally said. The Herd put up two big plays early in the first quarter on a 59-yard touchdown run from Damian Allen and a 90-yard scoot from Harris on the next Elk Grove possession. In the blink of an eye, it was 14-0 Herd. “Schematically, there's a lot of moving parts,” McNally said of Elk Grove's veer set. "They're extremely physical, and it's assignment football – 10 plus one. Ten guys doing the right thing and one guy not doing his job and a big play can happen at any time.” Harris and the Herd continued to pour it on as the QB ran for three more touchdowns, all from within the 10-yard line. Elk Grove’s defensive front was able to keep Whitney junior quarterback Eli Brickhandler under pressure all night. As imposing as the Herd seemed defensively, it still came as a surprise their head coach. “We were definitely worried about some of their skill players and their guys up front as well,” Heffernan said. “We were really concerned about their quarterback. He's such a good athlete in such a good quarterback. For our kids to come out and play the way they did tonight, honestly, it was a little unexpected. I didn't think that we would put the shutout up.” The win for Elk Grove marks the sixth overall championship in program history in its 10 overall tries. The last one came in 2001 when most of its players were not yet born. This was Whitney’s third crack at a section title, with the ‘Cats only banner coming in 2008. McNally and company anticipate they will not be overlooked next season. “I don't think we're going to surprise anybody next year,” McNally said. “We are going from the hunter to the hunted for the most part. That's a role we haven't been in and we are going to have to readjust ourselves mentally and physically because we're not going to sneak up on anybody anymore.”