BELLFLOWER — When the Mayfair football team began practicing in July, the goal was to play for 16 weeks.

The Monsoons, who won the CIF Southern Section Division 7 championship with a climactic 31-28 win against El Dorado last week, are one victory away from reaching that goal of playing for the program’s first state championship.

“Our mantra was that we wanted to play in every possible practice we could in the entire year and now we have that opportunity so we’ll see what happens,” Mayfair coach Derek Bedell said.

Mayfair (11-3) will host Mount Miguel (12-1) at Bellflower High’s Ron Yary Stadium on Saturday at 6 p.m. in the CIF Southern California Regional Division 3-A championship bowl game.

The winner will face the Northern California regional champion in the state championship game on Dec. 8 or Dec. 9 in Southern California.

“We just have to keep doing what we’re doing,” Bedell explained. “We are very together right now. We are playing very good team, complementary football, offensively, defensively and special teams wise. And I think that if we continue to do that it puts us in a really good position going forward, but I think the winner of this game is the team that’s going to be able to play complementary football.”

The Monsoons are on a five-game winning streak that included winning the program’s third CIF-SS football championship, the first since 2001.

“It felt really good on Saturday night. The players, the coaches, you put so much effort into it and to win it, you don’t really realize how much effort you put in until you actually do it, but we’re still playing so the season is not over for us,” Bedell said. “We’re excited about the opportunity this week.”

Bedell said the Monsoons have structured practices with their end goal in mind. They used technology like Catapult GPS tracking that records player performance during practice and games, showing specifically how fast and how far athletes are running. The data Mayfair collected was used to help prevent injuries by accessing players’ physical output via real time metrics.

“We can use those metrics to kind of gauge how kids are feeling,” Bedell said. “The other thing it does is it tracks how hard kids get hit, so we’re able to know some data on our kids that a lot of other places don’t have that ability to. So we can take a day like (Tuesday), where our team exerted a ton of effort on Saturday night in beating El Dorado, we can take that data and know that (Tuesday) needs to be a little bit of a less tempo, less contact practice and we can limit the amount of time we’re spending running around.”

Meanwhile, throughout the season, Bedell said two of the team’s most impactful players have been sophomore defensive back Miles Mitchell, the team’s leading tackler, and junior running back/linebacker Louis “CJ” Johnson, the team’s leading rusher.

“It’s really been building up to get them ready to explode late in the year and in the playoffs,” Bedell explained. “That’s exactly, that’s really what’s happened. CJ has done an unbelievable job both offensively and defensively for us the last five, six weeks, and Miles Mitchell has really started to play some significant, important play for us over the course of the last two games. Made a key play for us Saturday night (in the CIF-SS title game), a couple key plays for us Saturday night keeping us in the game, keeping the lead, so they’ve been a huge impact for us.”

Mitchell and Johnson both agree that they must do everything they can to keep their season going.

“For me, it’s real important because we could be the first team ever in Mayfair history to win state,” Mitchell said. “For me, that’s real big and we could go down as the greatest Mayfair team ever assembled, so I’m really trying to win state and hang our banner up there and be the only state champion.”

“I’m trying to hang the banner up there,” Johnson added. “Be able to get praises, brag about it and have our names remembered.”

Johnson said knowing that Mayfair’s coaching staff trusts him to run the ball means everything to him.

“It’s important to get trust from the coach, especially. I’ll get a shoutout to my O-line, because none of this would have happened without my O-line. They work their butts off. Without them, there’s no me, so they’re the important part to the running game,” said Johnson, who has 18 rushing touchdowns this season.

Mitchell said he’s solely focused on helping the Monsoons defense be the best it can be.

“Honestly, for me, I just take in the atmosphere, this playoff atmosphere is real different,” Mitchell explained. “I’m just taking it all in and I’m starting to become my own character and just play the game. Take it all in, don’t let the moment get too big and have fun with it at the end of the day. Take the pressure off, just lock in, just take it one play at a time, do my job and make plays.”

Johnson said Mitchell’s growth on and off the field has been apparent and central to the team’s success.

“He works his butt off for real, studying film, watching him 24/7. He’s like the main hype man to the team, without him, I don’t know where we would be,” Johnson shared.

Meanwhile, heading into game 15 for Mayfair this season, Bedell said his team still has room for improvement.

“We are continuing to find ways every week to get better,” Bedell explained. “Our coaches have done an incredible job of continuing to stick with the idea that it doesn’t matter whether we’re in the playoffs or we’re playing in the (Gateway) league season or the nonleague season. We’re going to go to practice and find something that you’re doing wrong and we’re going to fix it and we’re going to get better, and I think that’s really had us or put us in the position where we could make this run that we’ve made.”

Johnson and Mitchell are vowing to make Saturday’s game their best performance when it comes to energy and effort.

“I want to provide the most effort I can possibly provide for my team,” Johnson added. “Get them hype, get the energy going, flowing for everybody to be hype, and it will be a good game for all of us.”

“I’m giving it all I’ve got, Mitchell added. “It’s 110%. I’m going to go every play. I’m going to be hype. I’m going to be out here screaming. I’m going to do everything I can every single play to get the stop. Make the big play. Make that havoc play, turnover all of that. I’m going all out every play.”