Piedmont's Football Rematches Put Last Year's Breakthrough to the Test

Piedmont's homecoming game against Aragon was scheduled for September 18 at Witter Field. After three games, Piedmont stood at 1-2. Last fall they went 8-5, won the West Alameda County Conference's second seed, and reached the North Coast Section Division 7 championship for the first time since 1976, a 49-year gap that ended in a loss to Middletown. A worse record three games into this season looks, on its face, like a step down from that history.

It isn't, and the proof is sitting right there on the schedule. Aragon on September 18 and Arroyo on October 9 were scheduled as rematches against the same two teams Piedmont beat and lost to on the way to last year's title game. The rematches were never going to wait for the Highlanders to find their footing. They were scheduled for September 18 and October 9, against a team that had graduated the class that got them there.

A Senior Class Walked Out With the Record Book

Head coach Jordan Seiden has been direct about what last year's roster actually was. "We had a pretty big senior class last year, and that had a heavy influence on our team," he told Piedmont Exedra before the season opener. That class is gone, and Piedmont entered the season with a new quarterback.

Seiden's read on the change at quarterback was practical rather than sentimental. "I don't really believe in replacing a player. It's just the next man up," he told Piedmont Exedra. "Somebody goes down, somebody's got to step up." That left an open competition between two candidates, neither of whom had taken a varsity snap. One of them was going to make his varsity debut in the season opener against Napa with almost no margin for error, because the schedule wasn't offering a gentle re-entry. It was offering Arroyo and Aragon again.

The First Three Games Left the Answer Unwritten

Piedmont opened August 28 under the Witter Field lights against Napa and lost 7-28, the kind of result that would normally read as a program in decline. It reads differently once you know the new quarterback was making his first varsity start against an out-of-league opponent with no prior data to scout.

The response came a week later. On September 4, Piedmont shut out St. Mary's 28-0, putting up 306 total yards, 160 rushing and 146 passing, while managing injuries at receiver. In its report on the shutout, Piedmont Exedra quoted Seiden framing the shutout as a statement about effort rather than scheme: "When you shut a team out, that says a lot about how you played, your focus, how hard you worked in practice, the tackling, all of those things."

Then came Salesian on September 11, the closest look yet at where this team actually stands. Piedmont led 7-6 at halftime and 14-6 early in the fourth quarter on a pair of touchdown passes. Salesian answered with a touchdown to cut the margin to 14-12, then took the lead for good on a 14-yard touchdown pass with time running out, winning 20-14. Piedmont fell to 1-2. Salesian improved to 2-1.

After three games, that was not the profile of a team that had forgotten how to play football. It was the profile of a team that had been one fourth-quarter defensive stop away from 2-1, breaking in a new quarterback against a schedule that didn't care how long the rebuild took.

The Schedule Already Brought the Rematch

Here is what makes this season worth watching rather than writing off. The two opponents most closely tied to last year's breakthrough were scheduled for rematches on September 18 and October 9.

Seiden has already marked the Arroyo game on his own calendar as unfinished business. "We're a very different team from last year, and so are they, but we definitely have that date marked as one that we want to redeem ourselves," he said in a Piedmont Exedra report. That single loss to Arroyo is the difference between an undefeated conference run and the season Piedmont actually had, and it's the same team walking back onto Witter Field on October 9 to find out whether last year's near-miss was personnel or pattern.

Piedmont won the Aragon meeting comfortably last year after a tight first half. The September 18 rematch offered an early test for a first-year starting quarterback, while the October 9 game against Arroyo remains a chance to revisit last year's conference loss. Together, the matchups put this year's roster against the opponents that defined the last one.

Homecoming Week's Community Traditions

None of this unfolds in a vacuum. Piedmont treats its home opener and its homecoming as fixtures the whole town shows up for, not just parents of players. The Piedmont Education Foundation listed the season's first home game as one of its marquee community dates, with JV scheduled for 4 p.m. and varsity at 7, a schedule built for families to make an evening of it rather than duck in for the fourth quarter.

Homecoming week runs its own separate rituals inside the school before the ball is ever kicked off. Last year introduced a new addition to campus spirit: a Highlanders mascot built around the lion from the school logo, debuting at the homecoming rally in Binks Gym and tossing t-shirts to a crowd wearing purple. This year's dance was scheduled to follow the same pattern, on Saturday night in Binks Gym after the September 18 game at Witter Field.

The field itself has been busy beyond football this fall. On September 5, Piedmont's girls flag football program hosted a showcase called the Battle of the Bay, pitting East Bay schools against West Bay schools at Witter Field in a sport organizers describe as the fastest growing in the country. It's a reminder that Witter Field's Friday and weekend nights belong to more than one program, and that the town's appetite for showing up to watch its kids compete extends well past the varsity football scoreboard.

That is the texture that a win-loss record alone can't capture. The 1-2 record through three games looked like a step back only if you assumed last year's record was the baseline this program should already be matching again. Judged against what actually happened, this season began with a new quarterback and rematches against Arroyo on October 9 and Aragon on September 18. That makes it read less like a decline and more like the second half of the same story. October 9 will tell you which version is true.

Piedmont's rhythms, on the field and off it, are part of what makes the town worth paying attention to well beyond any single season. If you're weighing a move here, or watching from a home you already love and wondering what it might be worth in this market, Debbi DiMaggio has spent decades following both. Schedule your VIP consultation when you're ready to talk about what's next.