Since football season has begun, the Sahuaro high school football program has had difficulty trying to jump start their season. Their first game against our rivals, the Sabino Saber Cats, on Friday Aug 25 was a heart-breaking loss – the final score was 41-13. The subsequent game, our Varsity took on Queen Creek High School (located in Phoenix) and received another loss, final score 43-6.

It seemed like the Sahuaro football program was going further down then up, but one day Varsity head Coach Scott McKee, called a team meeting in the locker room.  According to Phillip Burish, JV quarterback, he said, “Guys, we need to get our stuff together. We are far too good of a team to be preforming the way we have been the past few games. So starting now, there will be some changes.” Some of the changes included practice starting at 3:45 every day, better attitudes in the locker room and on the field, all football players required to use conference period as its designed purpose to get help in class, and keeping our locker room nice and clean.

Going into last week, Monday felt different. The loss from the previous week was forgotten and we had moved on. “Just in the locker room you could tell the energy was different. People were ready to work,” said sophomore Trevor Armstrong. We put in four hard-working days of practice going into the Desert View game. When Friday came around, the football team was ready. The third play of the game, our Cougars scored off a 53-yard run by senior Goddy Amon-Ra. Our next touch down was a hard 39-yard run by Goddy. He broke about 3 tackles before making it into the in zone. The next big gain was by Junior Abrien Painter; he carried the ball for about 33 yards. Breaking about 5 tackles on the way into the in zone, Senior Goddy Amon-Ra scores again with a 16-yard run. The next amazing play which was called the “ best play of the game” by Coach McKee was when Junior Abrien Painter ran the ball straight down Desert View’s throats, but when a group of Jaguars was on the brink of tackling him, Senior Zach Sysney, Sophomore Trevor Armstrong. and the rest of the offensive line ran in and pushed our running back another 10 yards. turning a 6-yard run into a 16-yard gain. After that Abrien Painter hit the middle again resulting in a 24-yard run. Some other highlights of Friday nights game were two interceptions by Senior Jesus “Chuey” Carrillo and another by Junior Amir Hunter. The game resulted in a win by our Cougars -final score Cougars 20 Jaguars 0. This is just the first win by our Cougars all season, and the football team believes this is truly a new beginning. Let’s see if this can mark the beginning of a winning season. The next game will be Friday, 9/22 at Cholla.