The Football team played against Dana Hills for this year’s homecoming game on September 24. Dana Hills took the victory with a score of 0-43, leaving UHS with three losses and two wins so far this season.

At the beginning of the first quarter, Dana Hills made an 87-yard run, opening up the scoreboard in the first 12 seconds of the game. The team was able to make throws, but they were mostly incomplete passes. Sophomore and receiver Andrew Bogard explained how the team prepared and practiced for the game.

“We definitely watched a good amount of film,” Bogard said, “We also ran certain formations in practice that Dana Hills ran so we knew what was coming.”

During the second quarter, the score was 0-28 after Dana Hills scored 2 touchdowns. The team was able to gain yards, but not enough to score, and they weren’t able to connect as many passes. Tight end and senior Sebastian Acuña was close to catching 3 touchdown passes, but Dana Hills’s defense kept stopping all of the team’s chances to score. A major setback for the team was the number of players out because of prior injury.

“We had a lot of injuries on the team, and that didn’t help us,” senior linebacker Sharif Hayek said, “Dana Hills is a good team, but if we had a fully healthy team, we could have won the game, the injuries didn’t help us at all during the game, and that was the disadvantage.”

Even though the team lost the game, senior nose guard Ahmad Atkins felt satisfied with the way they played. While seemingly there is still a lot of work to be done, the defensive line’s efforts may not have been in vain.

“[Defense] hustled more and had a better understanding of the proper assignments that each player had to follow,” Atkins said.

After the homecoming game, the team played against Laguna Hills and Portola, adding two more losses for this season.