The highly anticipated, season-opening rivalry game against Mt. Carmel ended in a 43–21 loss after the Wolverines failed to keep up with the Sundevils’ hurry-up offense, Aug. 22.
After an early Mt. Carmel touchdown, wide receiver and cornerback, Josh Haney (12) evened the score with a 61-yard Wolverine touchdown pass from quarterback Matthew Guimond (12) to tie the score at 7-7. But the game’s fast pace and Mt. Carmel’s relentless offense quickly turned the tide. Team captain, receiver, and safety Evan Levine (12) said the similar offensive styles of both teams made for a demanding night, and the gap in the score wasn’t about effort, but about execution.
“Football is a game that can change in an instant,” Levine said. “It’s a game of inches, so there are certain plays that add up to that. One of the biggest things we took away is that the first game of the season is always going to have things you need to work out. [We] showed flashes of success, like Josh’s big touchdown, but there’s other big things in the game, like turnovers, that hurt us. But, we’re not worried about the game’s result for the rest of the season. We’re confident and optimistic about what we did and building off of that.”
Another major factor in the loss, Levine said, was the sheer number of plays.
“Mt. Carmel [was] running as many plays as possible.” Levine said. “A typical football game is somewhere around 100, 110 plays, and that game was about 180 plays, which is why it ended so late.”
The reason behind the increased number of plays was Mt. Carmel’s no-huddle offense, which proved especially difficult for the team’s relative youth. Gavin Donnelly (11), who started his first varsity game on Friday, said the Sundevils’ tempo caught him off guard.
“Twenty out of 22 starters had never started on varsity before,” Donnelly said. “I didn’t take into account how young we are and how inexperienced we could be, and I didn’t realize how fast they start a new play. Say someone gets tackled–you can huddle up, but they didn’t huddle up, they just went directly on the ball and then did another play. We had no time to think.”
Head Coach Mitchell Donnelly echoed that sentiment, pointing to their inexperience as a key challenge.
“Inexperience showed up in a big way,” coach Donnelly said. “We kind of hung in there for a little bit and then the wheels fell off.”
Despite the tough loss, Levine stressed that the team is focused on improvement and moving forward.
“There are some things you talk out as a team–little nuances to our game that we’re going to work on and game plan towards the next team,” Levine said. “No team is really the same, so what worked against Mt. Carmel might not work against [someone else], and things that hurt our defenses Friday night, another team might not be able to do.”
Still, Levine said the team is finding its rhythm and identity as the season continues.
“As a football team, you have your own identity, and so for us, our identity so far has been throwing the ball,” Levine said. “Spreading the field out and making big plays is our identity as an offense, and on defense next week we’ll go back to our base defense and we’ll build off of that.”
Levine said that part of that evolving identity comes from major changes in the coaching staff.
“We had a big coaching staff change with our new offensive coordinator, so our offense completely changed from last year,” Levine said. “Football is kind of like a thing we’ve been preparing for all year. We’ve basically changed our whole playbook.”
That preparation started long before the season opener, with months of practice in the offseason heat from June 16 to July 31, with the exception of dead periods from June 30 to July 13.
“Over the summer, it’s every day grinding on the field in the sun,” Levine said. “Sometimes it can definitely get discouraging, like, ‘Oh, the season’s so far away,’ but it goes by really fast. We put a lot of good work in, not just on the field sweating, but game planning and learning our identity.”
Levine added that the summer laid the foundation for the team’s growth this season.
“Honestly, football—you train it all the way from as soon as the season ends,” Levine said. “You start training, and then your team comes together in the spring, through the summer, and then fall and now we’re here. It kind of felt like it went by super fast, but I feel like we spent the summer doing a lot of good things, because you have your passing leagues in the summer and your 7-on-7, and we showed out pretty well in all of those. So now just bringing it all together and coming into the real season is what we’re trying to do.”
Scrimmages during the summer also helped sharpen the team for the season ahead. Those summer reps built confidence and excitement, even if the opener didn’t go as planned.
“We tried to bring out a bunch of teams that we knew would be physical and to come out and light a fire under us and get us prepared for the season — teams coming in ready to hit, ready to play,” Levine said. “We had a pretty good showing in the scrimmage. We played super well against some of these teams and it builds up hype and anticipation for the guys on the field.”
The Wolverines are eager to channel that summer preparation and early lessons into future games. Looking ahead, coach Donnelly said the team’s focus is steady improvement while keeping bigger goals in sight.
“It’ll be a struggle, but I fully anticipate and expect to come in, win our league, and go to the playoffs, but right now we’re taking it one week at a time,” Donnelly said. “We focus on getting better, we work hard, we love each other, we support each other, we take it week to week, and then see what happens. But we’ve got some obstacles to overcome right now.”
Levine echoed that optimism, emphasizing that the team is far from done.
“Our team’s going to come back firing this week, especially against Grossmont [tonight], and we’re ready for the rest of the season,” Levine said. “We don’t think this game defined us at all, and we have a lot coming.”
