The Agoura Chargers Game

Thusday the Rio Mesa Freshmam team hosted the Agoura Chargers in a non-league football game. By Frosh standards, this was quite a shoot-out affair with the Spartans coming up short by a score of 35-25. Our record is now 1-2 and we travel to St. Francis H.S. next Thursday for another non-league game.

Sprint Out Pass

As always, football really really a very simple game with certain constants.

EXHIBIT A: "The team that turns the ball over the most will usually lose."

We lost two fumbles in the red zone going in for scores at the one and fifteen yard lines. We also threw two interceptions. Agoura had zero turnovers. A -4 in the turnover battle is hard to overcome.

#5 is Spartan Tailback Martel Tyler

Martel, pronounced Marté, has been a shinning star for us all season and today was no different. He had two TD runs against Agoura of 86 and 31 yards plus an 80 yards Kickoff Return for a third TD.

He has scored seven of our nine TDs in our three games this season.

Our kicker, Daniel Gonzalez, was a perfect 2 for 2 on PATs and kicked a 31 yards Field Goal as time expired at halftime that would have been good from another ten yards out. Quite a leg for a ninth grader!

Post Game After Glow

This was a very, very bitter defeat and it was not easy to find positives immediately afterwards but we HAD to. A BIG part of our job as Frosh coaches is to be as positive as possible as we teach this years group of very inexperienced players the game of football.

We were able to stay calm and lay out what we needed to do next week to get better.

FROSH MOMENTS OF THE DAY: We had two of them today only seconds apart.

Late in the second quarter, after we fumbled at the one yard line, Agoura lined up in their usual Shotgun formation on second down and snapped the ball over the QB's head and out of the end zone for a safety.

The first safety of a Frosh football season is a coach's nightmare. That bad snap led to the usual, total confusion for any Frosh team as to what happens after a safety with Agoura having their choice of punting or kicking the ball from their own 20 yard line.

The refs were great today bringing the proper attitude with them for Frosh football. They gave both coaching staffs ample time to explain to their kids what was about to happen. That being said, both teams still had some players lined up on the wrong side of the 20 yard line before order was restored.

We only had about 50 seconds left in the half when Agoura kicked the ball off and we had all three of our timeouts. We executed a nice drive during which I yelled to our QB to spike the ball on first down to stop the clock and save our last time out at that point. He did as asked and as he executed the proper play for the situation about 3 or 4 of our newbies on the sideline started moaning "WHAT IS HE DOING!!!"

Since I don't call the offense, it afforded me the opportunity to instruct these players on the nuances of the "Two Minute Drill" which they obviously had not paid attention to when we installed it three weeks ago.

I may have spoken to them loudly and in a firm voice.

It amazes me that we have players on our team that have apparently never watched a college or NFL game on TV and have so little knowledge of the game they are playing.

Sunset in the Rio Mesa Parking Lot

An opportunity was lost today, we must learn from our mistakes, move on and be positive.