Varsity Football fell to Gunn High School 28-0 on Friday, Sept. 21. MVHS attempted to maintain its defense throughout the game, but GHS slowly accumulated points in each quarter, resulting in a loss for MVHS. Senior and Center Billy Levison says, due to the team’s 3-0 record, the Matadors may have come in overconfident.
“We thought we were going to win because we won last year,” Levison said. “We thought that if we executed like we did in the first and second week, we would have won in the end. Them getting the first touchdown, it’s kind of a bad start but we could’ve come back 14-0 at halftime. The game wasn’t unwinnable.”
Similar to Levison, Head Coach Ceazar Agront believes that the team had the potential to win the game. However, they were not able to channel that potential when executing the plays on the field.
“We weren’t firing on all cylinders,” Agront said. “I feel like, typically, whether or not we’re wired up, we’re doing extra steps, we’re trying to finish plays instead of get through plays. I feel like those are the key differences for us.”
Although Agront acknowledges the team had a good chance to beat Gunn, he says there were crucial moments when the team’s morale and defensive ability seemed to drop. Agront noticed these mistakes began with false starts.
“This was one of the sloppiest games that we played and it showed,” Agront said. “Every time that we made a mistake, they capitalized on it. Especially in a tight game where anything can tip the scales, I feel like those mistakes outweighed our wins.”
Agront says that at the high school level, many football players often feel immense pressure from their friends to do well, and there are overall high expectations from other people to win. He says that this “noise” causes players to become less level-minded and get “fired up” with passion instead of making calculated decisions.
Agront and Levison both ultimately attribute these feelings along with other circumstances, including the crowd and the false starts, to the loss that MVHS faced. Nevertheless, Levison feels that this loss is beneficial for the team, as it is the “wake up call” they need.
“I think we’re a better team than we were last year,” Levison said. “We just made too many mistakes, like dropping the ball and jumping offsides. I honestly think we didn’t lose to the other team. We lost to ourselves.”
