At their home field on the Friday night of Sept. 30, Carlmont’s JV football team took a fumble, suffering their first defeat of the season to the Capuchino Mustangs 32-16.
The Scots were in the lead at the end of the first quarter, with Daniel Mattioli scoring a touchdown to give the Scots a secure 16-14 lead. However, the Mustangs were able to come back, resulting in a painful loss for the Scots.
“My mentality going into the game was: ‘Let’s demolish this team. First league game, why not start strong?'” said sophomore middle linebacker Keoki Firenze. “Coming out, I was demoralized. Our defense couldn’t hold up, we didn’t do our job, and the game got away from us.”
There were many high hopes for the Scots, with this game having been the first league game of the season. The pressure was on and emotions were high, but the Scots were unable to find a way to come out on top.
Despite this loss, however, many of the players hold a positive mindset for the upcoming practices and games.
“We’re not going to screw around during practice, I’ll tell you that,” said sophomore starting linebacker Trenton Basso. “There was a lot of that this week, and I think 110% of it translated onto the field.”
Even though Carlmont lost to Capuchino last year as well, this loss still hit hard.
“A lot of our guys were very emotional, and it’s our first loss of the season, so it’s understandable,” said head coach Daniel Nelson. “The team is going to hopefully learn from this and be able to build off of it for next week.”
The result of the loss to the Mustangs will affect not only the individual players but the team as a whole throughout the rest of the season. “Even if we win our next four games, we still can’t say we’re undefeated because we lost this one,” Basso said. “We just have to improve our mindset. If we want to win, it has to come from the brain, telling us we want to do better.”
Along with a small crowd, the JV cheerleaders weren’t able to cheer at the game either, due to the Mini Monty Cheer Camp.
“Cheerleaders are always a positive force on the sideline, and without them, it definitely affects the team,” Nelson said.
The team plans to work hard, and, with Carlmont’s homecoming game coming up on Oct. 7, they now look towards perfecting their execution of practice into the actual game.
Although this game did not turn out the way Carlmont wanted, they are determined to bounce back and improve as a whole.
“I think this loss will impact us positively because we got motivation from it and learned from our mistakes,” Mattioli said.
