By ALLAN ZENG
Staff Writer
Football had a rough start to their season this past Friday, losing to Laguna Hills 42-8.
The Trojans struggled early on, ending the first quarter down 28-0. However, the Trojans played better after the initial quarter, holding Laguna Hills to only 14 points the rest of the game. Unfortunately, the deficit was too much to overcome.
For first year Head Coach, Chris Hernandez, the biggest issue for the team was their ball security, as the Trojans accumulated multiple turnovers throughout the course of the game.
“I definitely want to improve our ball security and make sure we’re not turning the ball over. We lost the turnover battle by a lot, we had 6 turnovers in the game and we spotted Laguna Hills 21 points off of that. We have to clean that up”.
Despite the loss, several athletes still had impressive performances. Senior Branton Lucas in particularly stood out, amassing 115 rushing yards on 16 carries and scoring a receiving touchdown. It’s clear he’ll be the focal point of the offense going forward into the rest of the season.
“Our offense is going to go as he goes. We need to get him the ball in space because he’s a dynamic player. The more we do that the more successful we’ll be. He’s one of our top players, he’s a senior, he’s a leader, he’s a captain, and we’re expecting a lot out of him,” Hernandez said.
Lucas was proud of his team’s effort and remains confident going forward into the season.
“Some positives from last game was that we were very physical. We all know what we needed to fix and we worked out the kinks during practice this week. I’m expecting for us to set a statement next game” he said.
With their first home game against Ocean View coming up, the Trojans are positive they’ll perform better. Senior Noah Nejad agreed with Lucas, believing that the time and effort the team puts into practicing will lead them to victory in future games.
“I expect our special teams to be better. We put more time into it at practice since we struggled with it last Friday at Laguna Hills. Hopefully the passing game will be in rhythm and we’ll hustle more on defense to get to the ball, “ Noah said.
Football Remains Optimistic Despite Loss
September 9, 2019
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