The football team played its annual game against its rivals, the Mountain View High School Spartans, for Mountain View’s homecoming game yesterday, September 22. The team lost 55-8. Mountain View started off with a strong first quarter and kept the momentum for the entirety of the game.

The Spartans took the early lead in the first quarter with a rushing touchdown at the 8:24 mark. The team scored twice again in the first quarter, one off of a recovered onside kick that was mishandled by the Los Altos special teams.

The Spartans expanded on their lead in the second quarter, including a score by the defense. The Eagles’ running back fumbled the ball and Mountain View recovered it for the touchdown. The first half closed with a score of 42-0.

Although Los Altos was shut out in the first half, it did have quite a few solid drives in the first half. However, they were all shut down by turnovers.

“We had good drives on a good team but we had mistakes that killed our drives,” senior Paul Hernandez said.  “We believe if we can clean up the little things in our game we will do good if not great things in the rest of our season.”

The second half exhibited stronger defense by the Eagles, who let in only two touchdowns. The first was a rushing touchdown halfway through the third period.

After Mountain View’s first touchdown of the half, Los Altos responded with a touchdown that was set up by a 42-yard run by Lambie Lanman. The drive continued with a short pass to Conrad Rodgers that brought the offense to the one yard line. From there, a short run sealed the tocuchdown, and the Eagles put up 6 on the board.

“If we continue to work hard we will [keep turning] those long drives into 7 points,” Paul said.

The team then proceeded to go for the two point conversion, and Lambie completed a rollout pass to Conrad to make the score 49-8. Mountain View then returned the next kickoff for a touchdown with 24.5 seconds to go in the game to finish the contest, making the final score at 55-8.

Despite the loss, the team is still looking to perform well in the De Anza League. The team has its next matchup against San Benito High School on Saturday, September 29.

“Everyone is looking at the season as we have nothing to lose but everything to gain,” Paul said. “We just need to keep working hard at practice and everything will start going our way.”

[Photos by Chloé Arrouye]