The homecoming football game brought excitement on Sept. 27th, the Falcons played an outstanding game against Fox highschool, beating the Warriors 38-14. Summit held the lead over Fox for the entire game, scoring the first 3 touchdowns and gaining the first field goal.
Head varsity coach Eric Stewart said their strategy going into the game was to make effective blocks to stay on top of the game.
“We needed to stop them running the ball and be able to attack their defense in a balanced way,” Stewart said.
Senior wide receiver Blake Bell completed 100 receiving yards and scored two out of the five touchdowns for the team during the game. Bell said after scoring, the importance of the game and the crowd’s loud cheering helped to get him hyped up.
“I was super excited, since it was homecoming and everyone was there and yelling. It was thrilling,” Bell said.
The score at halftime was 31-7, the Falcons ahead of the Warriors.
Senior quarterback Blane Branscum received a total of 188 passing yards this game and helped the team score three touchdowns from his passes. Branscum said that for him, a difficult part of the game was returning to the field after halftime and having to still put on a strong performance in the colder weather.
“Coming back after halftime, it was pretty cold, so we had to get warmed up again, that was probably the hardest part of the game,” Branscum said.
Bell also said that even though he was happy to have scored his touchdowns, he didn’t want to lose control of his reactions, and he needed to stay focused on the game.
“The most challenging part of the game was after I scored the first time, I didn’t want to let my emotions get too high and just stay calm and keep working,” Bell said.
Branscum said, although they might have had a good win, there is always room for the team to build and improve on both sides of the field.
“I think the game went pretty well and we got a big win, but I feel like we can always improve a little bit. I think we could improve on both offense and defense,” Branscum said.
Stewart said a key factor to their big win was their offense’s success in driving the other team to try and compete, which may have caused Fox to get aggressive, but that didn’t stop the falcons.
“We made some big plays on offense that put pressure on them to keep pace, [but] Fox was very physical and we needed to match and exceed that level in order to be successful, I think we were able to do that and the end result speaks for itself,” Stewart said.