Football unites through down year

The Ponies Friday night games were not strong, with a 0 and 3 losing streak to start their season off.  

After their three losses they came back two weeks ago playing White Bear winning 26-14 and winning again against Mounds View last week.

“The highlight of our season so far was the win against Mounds View. We had great plays and they deserved the win,” coach Beau LaBore said.

The team won their second game of the year against Mounds View High School, with a score 33-7.  They are starting to make a comeback from the start of the season, putting them at two wins and three losses.  The team faced a similar situation last year when they started off the season with a 0-2 loss.

LaBore said the team can overcome their losses and that they don’t focus on the wins and losses but how they play.

“My biggest concern about this season is keeping up our momentum up and just keeping the wins coming,” junior Cooper Yeary said.

The team is striving to keep their winning streak up and have a great rest of their season well as helping out with the community. The team does more then just play on Friday nights; every year the boys raise money for Tackle Cancer and donate their time bagging groceries and other opportunities around our community to raise money for the Tackle Cancer program. This year, for the community, the school and team raised $15,001.39 for tackle cancer, that’s double from what was raised last year.

“My favorite part about being a part of this team is the support of the community and the boys,” senior Anthony Alvarado said.

During the first scrimmage of the year, Alvarado went to go make a tackle during a play and landed on the other player’s knee leading him to rupture his spleen. After the accident he found out there was internal bleeding which put him out for the season.  He has been playing football since he was in third grade. This year will be his last year playing.  He is not moving forward with football in college.

“Our captians really stress that we are really a team and we all need to bring each other together,” senior Anthony Alvarado said.

The team is close knit and passionate. With their practices they spend hours on the field and hours watching content. To ensure that they learn more and get the plays down to fix what they need to. The team has two different teams on the field.They have the varsity, which is their main players, and then they have a junior varsity team for backup.

The team will strive for these last few games to keep their winning streak and be a stronger team as a whole.