LD: Hi. I’m Leah Desai.

EH: And I’m Emmy Harimoto. 

LD: Today we are joined by football players Rocco Ling, Graham Ischo and Christopher Lamfalusi to talk about their upcoming football season. 

EH: They are here to discuss potential challenges and successes that they might face this season.

LD: Our first question is what are your guys’ general thoughts on this season? 

RL: As long as everyone stays healthy, I think we have a pretty promising season this year. 

GI: Yeah, I think we’re very conditioned this year to say the least, if we beat teams, it’s going to be because we’re both trying harder, and we just have more gas in the tank to say we just have more conditioning in us. We’re going to be able to play four quarters more efficiently than other teams, and that’s going to be a huge advantage.

LD: How did you guys change your practice over the summer to adapt and make this happen?

RL: Running. 

Together: A lot of running and lots of conditioning. 

RL: Every day there’s always going to be running, and then if you make a mistake on the field or off the field, there is going to be even more running.

GI: Yeah, a lot of discipline. Our coaches are really focusing on discipline this year. Lack of discipline leads to punishment in conditioning, which we need anyway this year.

CL: We’re focusing a lot more on small things like not walking during practice and always running. You’re either running or standing — there is no walking on the field.

EH: What do you think will be your team’s biggest strength and biggest challenge for the season?

Gl: I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I’d say our conditioning is definitely going to be one of our biggest strengths. To talk more football, we have a lot of really good players and we’re a very senior heavy team, and most of our seniors are in skilled player positions. Just the experience alone, we have a lot of four-year skill players, and that’s going to be very advantageous for us. As for our weaknesses, as MVHS goes, it often falls to the line, because we just don’t have as many players, as well as big and athletic players. 

CL: I think a challenge is definitely gonna be numbers. We’re not a very big team, so injuries and things like that are pretty detrimental, just because there aren’t a lot of players to begin with.

RL: Yeah, and because of that, we got a lot of young people playing, and so there’s also still some inexperience on the field, which could lead to mistakes happening.

LD: What are some of your guys’ personal and or team goals for the season?

RL: Obviously, breaking positive, we did it last year for the first time in a long time. Last year we had a historically good defense like in all of MVHS history, so obviously our goal is to be better than last year in our defense category, which I think is very possible because we have a lot of seniors on our defense, and our defense is pretty much all seniors that have been playing for either three or four years.

GI: Yeah, I think my goal is to make the CCS playoffs.

LD: So based on the schedule, who do you guys think will be your toughest opponent?

GI: Kathleen MacDonald High School because they’re a very new school. So the last three years they’ve had no seniors, but this year their whole team is pretty much four year seniors, which is kind of like us, but they have even more four year seniors, and I think they’re more [athletic] focused there. So they’re gonna have a lot more athletes showing up, and they’re gonna have more numbers.

CL: I think we have a higher GPA than them.

RL: Definitely.

LD: Do you guys remember from the game last year, is there anything that you think you would need to succeed in the game this year? 

RL: When we played them last year, they weren’t that good. Just really locking down that QB, because that QB loves to run around, so really having the outside defenders make sure he keeps contained and stays in the pocket, would be really influential on who wins that game.

LD: Now, if you guys could go down the schedule and talk a little bit about the upcoming games, that’d be great.

GI: All right, let’s start from the top. We’ve already played Andrew Hill. They’re always a lot worse in the beginning of the season because a lot of their players aren’t able to maintain a GPA that’s required to play football, so they don’t get to play until later in the season.

GI: James Lick forfeited.

RL: We would have destroyed them.

GI: Yeah, they weren’t looking too good.

GI: Gunn, the year before last year, they were pretty similar to us. Last year, they had a really good year. It looks like they’ve gotten worse, but we’re not sure how much worse. They lost to a team that’s historically not amazing, but watching the film, that team didn’t look as bad as we thought they did, so it might be around our level, but it’s hard to tell.

LD: You guys played Saratoga in the homecoming game last year, right? 

GI: Yeah. 

LD: When you guys play them again, is there anything you guys want to improve on specifically?

CL: Beat them in regular time.

RL: I know that they see us as their rivals right now because of what’s happened in the past, or at least for the last year, and the year before last year because both games were very close. Both games MVHS would come back, and entirely beat them in the end, so I think they have a chip on their shoulders. They’re definitely going to want to win this year, so that’s going to be one of our harder games. They’re going to be playing really hard in that game. 

GI: Homestead is the first year we will play them in a long time. None of us have ever played them.

RL: One of the advantages we do have is a lot of our coaching staff has come from Homestead. So they know their plays, and they know their players pretty well, so that probably gonna give us an edge over them when we play them.

LD: Okay, and then the Homecoming game is Mills. So what’s to expect from that homecoming game?

GI: I think we’re gonna beat them. They had a lot of seniors last year, and they were not a very good team last year. We beat them 35-0, and during their senior night, their entire sideline was seniors, so I think they’ve probably lost at least 15 to 20 seniors. That will also be our first game on our new field. That would be interesting. We’re gonna be hyped.

LD: So what do you guys think about playing on the new field for the first time, is there anything that is going to feel different? 

CL: Yeah, I think Graham is gonna feel at least three times tougher scoring in a purple end zone instead of a black one.

GI: One, the turf is really hard so it’s much more painful to get tackled on. And I don’t know if other teams are gonna be ready for this kind of turf, because it’s just so different from what every team practices on. And I think that might be slightly advantageous for us, because we’ve been practicing on this newer turf much longer than these other teams have.

LD: Going down to the helmet game against Cupertino, what are your guys’ thoughts on that? 

RL: They have been a struggling program.

LD: You guys beat them last year in the Helmet Game. So what do you think helped you with that win?

GI: They had a lot of underclassmen on their team, half their team was made up of freshmen and sophomores, and they just had no experience. They just didn’t know what they were doing, which was unfortunate. It’s always bad when a team has to bring a freshman onto their varsity, which we thought we were going to have to do, until a lot of new freshmen showed up. So now we have a JV team.

LD: Do you guys think it has a really big effect whether or not a team has a lot of seniors?

RL: Coaches always say you can tell a team is going to be good by the amount of four year players they have. We have a lot of four year players, even though we have around 15 to 18 people on our varsity team right now, the majority of us are four year senior players, so that’s why we’re going to be able to stay in a lot of these tougher opponents and games like that. 

CL: Throughout your four years of high school, every year, you also feel so much bigger and so much stronger. As a senior, you just have an innate advantage over anyone that’s younger than you.

GI: It’s just experience, you learn stuff over the years that you play. You learn it over time, not just all at once. So just basic skills, like tackling, running, holding the ball, catching the ball, throwing the ball, very simple things like that you just learn over time, and over your four years of playing.

RL: Also, a really big emphasis on the four years, because a lot of people in this area have not played football, like outside of high school. So really having that extra year or two really pushes out significant advantages over other people.

LD: Thank you to Rocco, Graham and Christopher for joining us on today’s episode.

EM: I’m Emmy.

LD: And I’m Leah.

EM: Thank you for listening to EE-SPN, we will see you next time!