The last time the SPHS football team played was against Arundel last season. Since then, there have been many changes, “A lot of seniors graduated on both sides of the ball last year, but some guys have come back to play who did not play junior year so that has helped fill vacant spots,” said senior Ryan Bloom. Besides losing seniors, the falcons have had other distractions that has resulted into losing key players, “We lost a few players in the offseason due to disciplinary actions, which distracted our team a little bit but that translate to strength and being able to recover from adversity,” said junior Jake Cooley.

This season’s team is dramatically different than last season’s team, “Our biggest loss was losing size on the line, last year we had a lot larger line on both sides of the ball but now we are recovering from that and finding ways to work more efficiently without the advantage of size,” said junior Austin Persico. Contrary to losing size on the line, the falcons have gained an advantage with other strategies, “We are a better team thanks to our class A coaching staff led by Coach Bell,” said junior Sam Shirey. The falcons have made several changes including coaching, “One of our strengths is the athleticism in the secondary, many of the seniors that are playing this year are stars on the lacrosse field and are now taking their skills to the football field,” said Persico  

The falcons lost Friday on their first game to the North County Knights 49-48 with an intense comeback, “Against North county we let too many big plays form on defense but other than that we played a good game,” said Bloom. The falcons quarterback Garrett Edwards had a fantastic performance during Friday’s game, “Big congrats to Garrett Edwards on a lights out game, which helped us big time with our win,” said Cooley.

This Friday is a big test to the falcons they are playing the Chesapeake Cougars, “For Chesapeake we are preparing differently on the line because their lineman are a lot bigger than ours, the reason we have to prepare differently is because we are not used to playing against such large lineman,” said Persico. Lineman aren’t the only thing the falcons have to prepare for against Chesapeake, “Against Chesapeake we are focusing on total domination of both sides of the ball, we have done a lot of work this week to prepare for this game,” said Cooley