Why We Lost to City High

Ever football team has a breaking point. A point at which the water gates break open and unless the flood of unanswered points rains down. What separates a good team from a bad one is the amount of wear and exhaustion its individual parts can take before the whole machine shuts down. Many of the worst teams walk onto a field already broken by the expectation of being beaten and therefore give themselves no chance at winning the game. However, a team that's record is under five hundred can easily upset a "better" team by believing they can win and pushing themselves beyond their expected breaking point. This is what we started last Thursday night but did not finish.

The Little Hawks are a good football program, there is no doubting that. But when we walked on the field with them last Thursday there was not one among us who believe we couldn't beat them. It was that belief that pushed us to a one possession game against them at the half and it was that belief that could have spurred us to win the game. However, when we came out the second half and were forced to punt right away it pushed us closer to our breaking point, and when Iowa City sensed that they began to pour it on. They backed us further and further toward the edge of the cliff, and although we never quit gave up and fell off, we never gained back the ground we had lost either.

What separated us from Iowa City in the 3rd quarter of the game was not a physical difference. They didn't take some miracle protein in their locker room that made them magically bigger, faster, and stronger. What did happen was almost more significant. They were probably yelled at, they were definitely motivated, and they were all convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that they could win. But we were to. The difference came in the first plays of the second half. When we were giving everything we had and still losing play after play we began doubting ourselves. We were never beat but City High physically, but mentally we got tossed around. And mentally we gave up.

I believe this can be credited to who our team is made up of. First, we are a relatively young team. We have only three returning starters, and many of our new starters are juniors and two are even sophomores. Most of us have never played in games like this on the varsity scale. Games where one play we gain twenty yards and the next we lose six. Games like this are tolling and require extreme mental discipline to not get frustrated and lose hope. Also, our junior class is particularly inexperienced with this season as a whole. We went undefeated 8th grade, 7-2 winning our conference 9th grade, and 7-2 again in 10th grade. We have never had a losing record before and I believe it's causing many of us to lose confidence in ourselves and our team. When we came out trying as hard as we could and still losing at half, many may have resorted to calling the season a failure and believed we could never beat a team of Iowa City's caliber.

This is mostly discouraging, but also gives me hope. I don't believe it is a good thing the team gave up on itself after competing so well with one of the best teams in the state, however if inexperience is really the culprit of our lapse in play, then hopefully as we grow as a team we will continue to get better and eventually be able to finish games against tough opponents.