The Raines football team huddles after their 28-8 win over Sarasota Booker in a FHSAA Class 3A state semifinal on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. The Vikings (13-0) advanced to the seventh state final in program history. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on December 11, 2025 at 1:59 pm
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A lot of business trips slated for a Friday night in December would be canceled. The Raines football team is unlike most. Their trek to Pitbull Stadium has been circled in maroon ink for 52 weeks.
The undefeated Vikings (13-0) return to the FHSAA football finals on Friday.
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Raines will play Miami Northwestern (13-0) in the Class 3A final. It’s a contest that was possible because of their collective self-belief that this year would be different and the brotherhood to speak words into existence.
Northwestern eviscerated Raines 41-0 in last year’s final. It was a sudden and shocking end to what had been an unbeaten season in Northwest Jacksonville.
Second chance at glory
Amid the raindrops in South Florida, the Vikings vowed to return. Now they have.
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“After we lost, we got right back to the drawing board,” said Raines captain Tony Williams. “Everybody had the same feeling. Everybody had that bad taste in their mouth. I’m not happy. I’m not satisfied. I don’t want to celebrate nothing until the deal is at hand and we win it all.”
Williams is a senior linebacker who accepted a football scholarship at the University of Illinois.
A lot of teenagers say they will play on the final week of the high school football season. Blitzing through 13 opponents as Florida descends from steamy summer to dry December air is something else.
Raines put 77 on Sandalwood in August, ramrodded Class 7A finalist Lake Mary in September and blasted Bishop Kenny 61-15 in November.
Last week, Raines held Sarasota Booker’s vaunted offense to a garbage-time touchdown in a 28-8 win at The Graveyard.
“Everybody doesn’t get a second opportunity. But it came around full circle,” said defensive tackle Ge’Terius Brown. “Football gods work in a way. God works in His way. We’re just not satisfied. We got the same feeling last year. But, we didn’t finish the drill last year. This year, we got to finish.”
Doing it for Duval
Raines looks to become the third Duval County public school to finish a football season undefeated, untied and with a state championship. Matthew Gilbert finished 11-0 and won the Florida Interscholastic Athletic Association title in 1958. Raines finished 15-0 and won a Florida High School Athletic Association title in 1997.
When Raines faced Northwestern last year, alumni from Ribault, First Coast, Paxon and elsewhere were in the stands to support the Vikings.
This is only the third instance in the last 60 years where a Duval public school has advanced to the state football final in consecutive years. The Vikings did it in 2017 and 2018, when they beat Cocoa in both contests. Meanwhile, Wolfson lost to Coral Gables in 1967 and 1968. Both programs had young men whose names reverberated across the city for decades.
The school on Moncrief Road is more than its football team. The young men who wear the maroon and gray on Friday nights are members of the National Honor Society, volunteers and community leaders.
“We have a lot of leaders. A lot of people that stepped up from last year’s team,” says Raines quarterback Timothy Cole, who has a 26-1 record as the Vikings’ quarterback. “Ge’Terius Brown, Shareef Jackson and guys on the defensive end. … The whole team is big on leadership. Coach Masline preaches leadership and discipline. We all have our own aspects of leading that we’re good at.”
The Vikings players and coaches know they follow in the footsteps of local legends. The reminders are on the buildings where they prepare for victory. Their locker room is inside the James Day Fieldhouse, and the field is officially named Freddie Stephens Field at Earl S. Kitchens Stadium. The football field is on Jimmie Johnson Parkway.
Donovan Masline is completing his sixth year as the head coach of his alma mater.
Masline has sought to instill perseverance, scholarship and uplift in the young men in his care — while also winning football games.
“They know what it means to put on a Raines jersey,” Masline says. “To don that Raines name across their chest, they know what comes with it inside the school. They know what comes with it when you walk in the community with the shirt on. They understand what it means to be a Raines Viking. All we want to do is make sure we are upholding the trailblazers in our school’s history. We want to ensure we continue to stand on their shoulders.”
Same opponent, different outlook
The Vikings hope to become the fifth program in state history to get shutout in a state final, return the next year and depart with the trophy they want.
The last team to do it was Hollywood Chaminade-Madonna, which was shut out by Bolles in 2002, then won the first of its nine state titles in 2003.
However, Miami Northwestern is not Madison County. The Bulls have more stars than some constellations. Northwestern two-way players Calvin Russell and Nick Lennear terrorized the Vikings last year, combining for 195 offensive yards and three touchdowns.
Regardless of who Northwestern will send on the field, Raines is confident.
“The embarrassment last year, I made a promise to myself that it would not go into this year,” Brown says. “I know my brothers are on the same page as me. We’re all going to get there and do what needs to be done. … We didn’t come out and execute like we normally should and how we normally would.”
Brown, who earned a football scholarship to Charleston Southern, was among the half dozen Raines players who accepted football scholarships earlier this month.
Raines coaches say a half dozen other seniors expect to enroll as undergraduate students next year and not play football.
Nevertheless, the stars and the scholars receive the same support from the Vikings’ vast supporters.
Entertainer and former William M. Raines Marching Vikings member Lil Duval roamed the sidelines during the first half of last week’s semifinal win. Construction companies, child care centers, restaurants, insurance firms, pharmacists and multiple Missionary Baptist churches are among the entities that financially support the program.
Before the team departed Thursday morning, a half dozen graduates from Raines’ 1976 graduating class cheered the Vikings as they boarded busses. The alumni prayed for traveling grace for the bus drivers from Graham Tours before they and the Vikings departed for South Florida.
“We have a lot of faith-based partners that put their prayer into our kids. They say a lot of affirmations to our young men,” Masline says.
“These young men have locked in and bought in into their assignment in the offseason. The amount of work we put in, the strain we put on them for this moment. To make it come to fruition, it’s easier said than done.
“You gotta put the work in. You can’t be afraid of being coached hard. You can’t be afraid of working hard. You can’t be afraid of commitment. You can’t be afraid of sacrifice. These young men have met all of those challenges head-on as a team. Even after they leave Raines High School, they are going to understand what it is that they learned here. They are going to take it and apply it to their life.”
Believe to achieve
Raines averages 50 points per game and trailed in only one game all season. Brown, Jackson, Troy Butler and Tony Williams lead a defense that has produced five shutouts.
On Friday night, Williams will captain the Vikings for the last time. His helmet will be off and in his left hand. The right will be used to introduce himself and the team that plans to put on for the city.
“It’s a great feeling knowing that people have my back, outside of me believing in myself,” Williams said moments after recording five tackles and a tackle for loss in the semifinal win over Sarasota Booker. “(This) week, I got to do the same thing. I look forward to winning it all.”
