SANTA GERTRUDIS ACADEMY LIONS WIN SEASON OPENER — Santa Gertrudis Academy High School’s football team won their first on-the-field varsity game on Friday after rallying back to defeat Agua Dulce 22-21. THE GAME

When the game clock ticked away its final seconds during Friday’s football game, it read 22-21 in favor of Santa Gertrudis Academy High School.

The Lions had rallied just in time to edge Agua Dulce and notch their first on-thefield varsity football victory in school history.

The Longhorns took a 21- 14 lead into halftime after scoring all three of their touchdowns in the first quarter. Academy’s two scores, at that point, came on runs of 66 and 50 yards by Wide Receiver Armando Hinojosa in the second quarter.

Quarterback Connor DeLaney rushed 10 yards for a touchdown, with 5:30 left in the game, and then punched the ball in for the twopoint conversion that gave Academy its eventual game winning lead.

With 11 seconds left in the game, Agua Dulce attempted a go-ahead field goal, but missed.

THE FINAL KNEE

The final play of Friday’s game was a first ever for Academy. DeLaney took the snap from his center…and then took a knee.

“Nothing has ever felt better to me than winning this game,” DeLaney said. “It was an experience that no one else in our school will ever forget, it was amazing.”

The junior quarterback said his team’s game winning rally came through perseverance.

“We just kept our heads up,” DeLaney said. “We knew we were not going to resort to ‘oh no, here we go again’, we knew we could fight and get back in this game. We just believed in each other and kept fighting.”

Since the football program’s inception, the Lions have evolved into a credible squad.

“I do not know if words can explain how far we have come,” DeLaney said. “We started off with this program excited and then hit some low points but this year our motto is ‘change’. Right now we believe we can compete with anybody, we’re going to celebrate this weekend but it’s back to work on Monday to start preparing for Runge.”

THE HEAD COACH

Lions Head Coach Wally Moon got a kick out of seeing his boys on the sideline watch DeLaney take the final knee.

“I really wasn’t watching him (DeLaney), I was instead watching our other guys on the sideline enjoy watching him take that final knee,” Moon said. “I just wanted to enjoy watching the kids who were all just jumping around and hollering being just as happy as they could be. It was a great feeling on my part to see them enjoy the win that much because they deserved it.”

Moon echoed his quarterback’s claims in regards to the program’s evolvement.

“It has come a long way but it came an extra long way tonight and that is because at the start of this game there were things that looked like last year,” Moon said. “But where these guys did not know how to respond to adversity in the past, they hung in their this time, played through adversity, made some of their own breaks and took that big leap forward in becoming competitive.”

With win-number-one now in their school’s history book, Moon and his boys already have their next goal in mind.

“Win the second varsity game. I definitely think more wins are possible, we have four or five games this season where we have a legitimate chance of being competitive in,” Moon said. “If our kids advance far enough and start figuring out football some more we could do better than that and that would be good for us. We’ll go to Runge next week (Friday at 7:30 p.m.) and try to go for win number two, but what I want our players to understand now - more importantly - is that they have to prepare to win every Friday night game starting on Monday.”

THE PUNT

Late in the game, Academy Punter Joel Obregon found himself inside his own endzone. Obregon knew Agua Dulce’s defensive players were gunning for him, not wanting to be the first team ever to lose on the field to the Lions.

“Of course, all of the bad thoughts were coming to my mind like ‘what if the snap is too high’, ‘what if I miss the ball’, ‘what if the other team scores a safety’ and you just never know what can happen,” Obregon said. “But I just cleared my mind before the snap and just kicked it.”

A member of the football team since its inception in 2007, the senior punter summoned up three years of frustration and launched a kick that landed well past the 50-yard line.

“I jumped up excited, my hands were in the air going crazy because I knew it was a very good punt,” Obregon said about watching the ball hang in the Friday night sky.

The team’s gusto on Friday was a first, Obregon mentioned.

“Being on this team since my freshman year, I have never seen it fight and compete as we did tonight,” Obregon said. “We just went out there and played hard and competed with the other team and won. I had a personal motto for this season, ‘I’m not leaving this school without a ‘W’’, so I can leave happy now.”

Obregon fought through a cramp while standing on the field as DeLaney solidified Academy’s win with the last kneel down.

“I had so many emotions, I wanted to cry, jump up and yell,” Obregon said. “It just felt so good.”

THE DEFENSE

Allowing three touchdowns in the first quarter can crush the emotions of even a high caliber team. The Lions, however, didn’t let it happen to them.

“We all knew we were in the game and that it was going to be a good match up so we just stuck in there and gave it our all,” Academy Defensive End and Captain Emilio Martinez said. “I knew things were going to change this season, it wasn’t going to be like last year, we were not going to be shutdown. I knew this year we were going to be a different team because of our coaching staff and our work ethic and we were all very excited to get started.”

Martinez added that the Lion defensive unit is better than most people give it credit for.

“I think we are overlooked, but we have good size and speed,” Martinez said. “Our secondary just needs to get used to their new system, because many of them are first year players, and I think we will be alright.”