Varsity Football clinched their second win of their season, defeating James Lick High School 41-0 on Thursday, Sept. 5. The Matadors maintained a strong offensive and defensive line in the first two quarters, resulting in JLHS forfeiting just before halftime.
Senior and running back Finnegan Hassy said the team displayed high energy throughout the game, which ultimately led MVHS to a dominant win. He says that their victory was a team success, with a variety of players in different positions collaborating, which led to a touchdown on almost every drive.
Offensive coordinator El’Hajj Malik says one aspect that needed to be improved was ball security. Before the first touchdown, JLHS received an early possession after a series of fumbles by MVHS’s offense. He says this will be a focus during practice this week before MVHS faces tougher teams in the league.
“A lot of [the mistakes we made early] was execution and protecting the ball,” Malik said. “On one drive, we fumbled the ball three times until we finally lost it and gave them an early possession. Against better teams, and especially within league, a drive ending like that can be the difference between winning and losing.”
Despite a shorter practice week due to Labor Day, Hassy says the team analyzed film of JLHS and did a lot of conditioning to prepare for the game. Malik said that the team “tightened up” their performance, solidifying its execution of a few plays.
“From the game last week, we had a handful of plays that we ran fairly successfully and really clean,” Malik said. “We stuck with that going into this game and didn’t venture outside of what we did last week. We knew that if we played [to our abilities] and kept the number of plays we ran small, not only would it help us for the future, but also put us in a good situation tonight.”
Looking forward, head coach Ceazar Agront says the team should focus on the basics before branching into new types of plays. Once refined, he says, the team can experiment with a variety of other plays in future games.
“We have to be airtight on the basics that we’ve implemented over these last two weeks and build on that,” Agront said. “We can get a team to get the whole defense on one side and run on the other — we’re on the cusp of tapping into that.”
Malik says that support for the team is central to their performance, especially as leagues starts next week. He calls for greater attendance of games for all sports, whether it be for football, basketball, soccer or field hockey.
“I’m hoping that starting off 2-0 lights a fire under our student body and builds our school spirit,” Malik said. “We need to be more supportive of our athletics here at Monta Vista, and need to be more active. Hopefully the early success gets people excited and gets them to come out.”
