New Players in a New School

As the new school year starts up again new football players from Freshmen and JV share their thoughts on playing for a new school and team.

By: Michael Flores

It’s that time of the year again as students start filling up seats at the bowl, band playing pep tunes, and fans getting loud as football season is back in session, so let’s recap how the freshmen and JV teams are doing so far into the year.

Let’s first go over how the freshman team is doing, as students who played during middle school finally got a chance to play at the high school level. On Thursday, August 22nd, They played against the Centennial Golden Hawks in hopes of getting their first football win as a Redwood Ranger, and not only did the freshman team win, but they dominated the entire game with a final score of 28-8.

On Friday, August 23rd, the JV players got their chance to play at the next level of high school football as they played against the Centennial Golden Hawks. They put up a good fight, but weren’t able to pull off the win Friday night and start their season off with a 0-1 record with a final score of 20-6 at home.

Last week, the freshman and JV teams traveled to Clovis North to face the Broncos as the Freshmen hoped to get their second win of the season and JV hoped to get their 1st win of the season, the freshmen Rangers put up a terrific fight in Clovis weren’t able to pull off a win in Clovis as they lost 20-0. The JV team also put up a great fight in Clovis and pulled off a close and great victory against the Broncos with a final score of 23-20, as both JV and Freshmen have a record of 1-1.

Issac Flores, ‘28
Photo courtesy of author, Flores

Gabe Matos, ‘28, and Issac Flores, ‘28, who are both part of the freshmen football team, have shared their thoughts on playing football at a high school level in the past two weeks.

Matos who plays cornerback, states his thoughts on playing Football for high school: “Middle school is just flag football, high school is tackle. It’s way more complicated. First week against Centennial we did pretty good, we were locked in … Second week though, we just weren’t ourselves.”

Flores, who plays right tackle, also shared his thoughts on playing Football for High School and stated “I like it, it’s very different. The first week we did good, we had good passes, runs, and blocking… In the second game, we made lots of mistakes but we can fix it up”

Salvador Cabrera, ‘28, the starting quarterback for the JV team shared his thoughts on playing JV at a high school level the past 2 weeks: “It’s a lot tougher than it is in middle school. Against Centennial, we could have done a lot better but against Clovis North, we came out in the second half and did a lot better,” says Cabrera.

Cabrera’s current goal is to “win out for the rest of the season.”