SANTA CLARA — Three of the Top 8 teams in the Bay Area Preps HQ preseason football rankings will play at Levi’s Stadium on Sept. 6, the 49ers announced Friday.
No. 5 Menlo-Atherton will face No. 4 Serra in the second game of the doubleheader. Kickoff is 7:30 p.m.
In the 5 p.m. opener, No. 8 Wilcox, which is no stranger to playing at the 49ers’ home venue, will take on San Benito.
Serra and Wilcox were to play these games on their home fields.
“For 99.99999 percent of us, this will be the only time that we’ll get to play in an NFL stadium,” Serra coach Patrick Walsh said. “So I saw it as a great opportunity for this entire community to experience something that’s unique and it will be fun for us to just roam the halls of the stadium.”
While the 49ers reached out last month to gauge possible interest, none of the players found out until Friday — though the Wilcox locker room shared an inkling after previous victories at Levi’s Stadium in 2014, 2015 and 2017.
“You’re not allowed to tell them until today, but our players kind of know because we play there every other year,” Wilcox coach Paul Rosa said. “They don’t know for sure, but they have an idea.”
Walsh and Rosa addressed giving up a home game for this opportunity.
“The cost of it is we love playing at home, we love playing at Serra, but that was what we had to give up to do it,” said Walsh, who did a little research by contacting Valley Christian coach Mike Machado, whose team played at Levi’s in 2015.
“It’s a pretty once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Rosa said. “It’s an NFL stadium, so it’s the best it could possibly be when it comes to talking about locker rooms to the field to everything. It’s just something that I know the kids who have done it before they’ll never forget.”
The doubleheader will feature a trio of recent state champions.
Serra claimed its only state football title in 2017, while M-A and Wilcox followed suit this past December.
Walsh understands that his team will be tested.
“No doubt about, and that’s what the intent of our preseasons are every single year,” Walsh said. “And with Pittburg and St. Mary’s bookending M-A, at the end of those three weeks we’ll know exactly who we are, who we aspire to be.”
Wilcox is quite familiar with its opponent three weeks from now.
“We play San Benito every year because they’re always tough and they’re always good,” Rosa said. “It should be a good matchup, like it always is.”
Previous experience at Levi’s should help Wilcox prepare for the moment.
“We kind of get there a little early so you can just walk around the stadium,” Rosa said. “You can walk on the field and just take your time in getting the awe factor out, and then at some point you have to get refocused on the game.”
Meanwhile, Walsh already devised a plan on how to help his players acclimate to the environment at an NFL stadium.
“I’m going to show the team the video of Hoosiers,” Walsh said. “When they walk in and the coach measures the distance from the free-throw line to the end line and how high the rim is. And I think once we get over the reality of it, it’s still a 100-yard football field with 10-yard end zones. The only difference is there will be a bigger stadium around it and tighter hash marks.”
He added, in sarcasm: “We’re expecting a sellout. It should be fun.”
General admission tickets in the lower bowl will go on sale at a later date on TicketMaster.com for $25.