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OAKLAND — Eyebrows were raised when the California Interscholastic Federation announced its pairings for the NorCal football regionals and McClymonds High was slotted in the 2-A division.

During the last three seasons, beginning in 2016, the Warriors had gone from 5-A to 5-AA to 4-A. One step at a time. But after three straight state titles, the CIF matchmakers decided to test Mack. The Warriors were boosted four floors higher, to a home game last Saturday night against Manteca.

Final score: McClymonds 46, Manteca 13. It wasn’t that close.

Now the Warriors (11-0) will join the state’s elite in Norwalk this weekend, where they will battle Pacifica-Oxnard (14-1) in the CIF State 2-A championship Saturday at noon at Cerritos College.

Only the top five divisions — Open, 1-AA, 1-A, 2-AA, 2-A — play at Cerritos. De La Salle, Serra, Clayton Valley Charter and Central-Fresno are the other NorCal schools who will get to make the trip south. St. John Bosco, Corona del Mar, Sierra Canyon and Aquinas-San Bernardino will be waiting.

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How did McClymonds, the smallest school in the six-team Oakland Athletic League, which is made up of all Oakland Unified School District institutions, become one of the Bay Area’s foremost football powers? Mack, with about 370 students, has fewer than half as many students as the next smallest OAL school (Castlemont).

There are many different answers.

The weight program is second to none.

There is a tutorials program that runs from 4-6 p.m. Monday through Thursday. It’s mandatory for football players.

Coach Michael Peters, himself a Mack grad, has been at the school for two decades. He took over as head coach in 2013, and most of his assistants have been there with him for all seven seasons. The Warriors are 83-9 in that stretch.

Open enrollment in the OUSD helps, but Peters says there are probably 300 students in McClymond’s attendance area attending other high schools in the district.

McClymonds, which opened in 1915, is located in West Oakland. The school has room for as many as 1,200 students, according to first-year OAL commissioner Francisco Navarro. But many choose to attend Oakland Tech, which has a wider variety of academic offerings.

“Open enrollment helps all schools,” Peters said. “Everybody thinks it helps us a great deal. It doesn’t. But if a kid wants to come here, he can.”

And why wouldn’t they? Only a handful of Bay Area schools have better teams than McClymonds. The calpreps.com computer has only De La Salle and Serra rated ahead of Mack in the Bay Area.

“It’s phenomenal what they are doing,” said Laney College coach John Beam, who in the 1990’s had a powerhouse program at Skyline. “They’ve exceeded even my teams.”

“My hat’s off to my brother Michael Peters,” San Jose State assistant coach Alonzo Carter said. “It’s incredible what he’s doing. Mack kids come hungry and with chips on their shoulders. But it’s a school with tradition and pride.”

Carter names Bill Russell and Frank Robinson as two of the great athletes from McClymonds. Paul Silas and Antonio Davis, both successful NBA players, are two more.

“Mack was historically a basketball school,” Carter said.

Peters and Carter were instrumental in turning McClymonds into a football school. Both graduated from McClymonds in 1986. Carter was the head coach for eight seasons, turning around a down program and winning four OAL titles before leaving for Berkeley High after the 2006 season.

Peters stayed on the staff after Carter departed and was named head coach in 2013. He has never lost to an OAL opponent, hasn’t lost a playoff game since 2015, when the Warriors were beaten by Palo Alto in the NorCal regionals, and will enter Saturday’s contest with a 23-game win streak.

While the weight program and open enrollment get much of the credit for McClymonds’ success, what falls under the radar is the strict academic standards Peters demands.

He is on campus full-time, employed by the school district and a non-profit organization called SPAAT — Student Program for Academic and Athletic Transitioning. The founder, Harold Pearson, started the program, and it’s open to any athlete at McClymonds.

It’s open to any student on campus, and football players spend from an hour and a half to two hours in there before hustling off to practice. Occasionally, there are speakers — college advisors, financial experts. On Monday, there was a speaker from Stanford.

“We’re not coaching just to win games,” Peters said. “We want them to get to the next level. We want kids to understand life.”

There are field trips as well. In the spring, Peters takes some of his players to the Northwest. They stop at Oregon and Oregon State, then head up to Seattle for the spring game at the University of Washington, where Peters’ son Marcus, now a cornerback for the Baltimore Ravens, played in college.

“We take these kids on college trips, and when we come back, we don’t have to ask them to go to the weight room,” Peters said.

San Quentin is another destination. “We show them what can happen if they make mistakes,” Peters said.

When Peters and Carter joined forces at the start of the century, they studied various high school programs to find models for their own. De La Salle, Skyline, Bellarmine College Prep and Valley Christian were heavy influences. So was Bishop O’Dowd.

“John Beam demanded excellence from his players,” Peters said of the one-time Skyline coach. “Now I demand it from mine.”

In the weight room, on the field and in the classroom.

“McClymonds has had great academic success,” said Beam, who remains heavily involved with the Oakland schools, which supply numerous players for his powerhouse Laney football team. “Peters is there all day, and he gets his kids indoctrinated to being student-athletes.

“Oakland needs to bring back teachers that coach. It makes a big difference.”

Other Oakland schools are trying to follow McClymonds’ example. Skyline, which went 9-3 this season — two of the losses were to McClymonds — has an on-campus coach in Joe Bates, who played for Beam.

“We’re focusing on what they are doing,” Bates said. “They’re a great program, they’re consistent, they have a solid foundation, they have the same people on their coaching staff. We’re trying to do the same things.”

McClymonds will come into Saturday’s contest against Pacifica as a three-point underdog, according to the calpreps.com computer. It picked a 34-31 final score. The Warriors haven’t allowed more than 21 points all season.

Maybe the computer checked the enrollment figures of the two schools. Pacifica has over 3,000 students, almost 10 times as many as McClymonds.

That shouldn’t bother the Warriors. They’re used to being small in numbers. It never seems to matter.