Winning State of Mind
Senior running back Mason Gauthier carries the ball down the field while being chased by three North Bullitt players.
Playing games and taking W’s.
The football team pulls away with two wins in a row vs North Bullitt and Graves County.
Senior safety Ryan Still was hungry for a win going into the North Bullitt game. Still transferred from North Bullitt to East at the beginning of this year. It was a shutout on Eagan field against North Bullitt with the final score being 43-0 East. The following week, we got another non-conference win against Graves county winning 54-21 East.
Going into the game against North Bullitt all eyes were on Still. “I treated it like just another game all week but once I got out there, I realized it was more to me than I had thought. But after I started playing a bit and got hit a little bit, I got over it and knew it was time to play,” Still said. With North Bullitt being a county rival for East and Still’s old team the pressure was on for not just the team as a whole but for Still specifically. After a few adjustments in the first quarter, it was clear to everyone that this would be East’s game.
The team went into the game against North Bullitt with confidence and expectations of winning. “I was very confident, and the team was very confident, playing a county rival,” senior guard Sebastian Espinoza said. The team looks forward to playing county rivals every year and this year was no different. “My main goal was winning. We went in there wanting to win. We tried to shut them down defensively. They [North Bullitt] haven’t scored a single point all season, so we tried to keep it that way,” Espinoza said. With North not having scored all season the team was determined to keep it that way and stop them from scoring all game.
Going into the fourth quarter the Chargers had managed to keep North out of the endzone. However, in the final minutes of the game, North found themselves just outside the endzone and was fighting for the touchdown. Being just a few yards out North’s quarterback threw a pass to a receiver in the endzone. Everyone was on the edge of their seats convinced this would be North’s first touchdown of the season when Still jumped up blocking the pass at the last second. “I was just thinking, ‘Please do not let them score, I will never hear the end of it.’ Especially if it was on me. That would have been the first touchdown of their season and we did not want it to be on us,” Still said. The team quickly celebrated the block before going right back to the game.
After the win over North Bullitt, the team went on to play Graves County at Graves. The team was determined to redeem themselves after last year’s loss to Graves County. “People were hungry to win again. Everyone hates losing. It’s a team, you can’t blame the loss on anyone. If you lose, we lose. It’s the whole team,” Espinoza said. At the end of the first, it was tied at 14 but East pulled ahead during the next two quarters. In the second quarter, they held them at zero and scored 21, then again in the third, scoring 19 points and keeping Graves at zero. Graves managed to score 21 points in the final quarter but it wasn’t enough to get back in the game. East left Graves with a win redeeming themselves from last season and starting a winning streak this season.
The team will play Bullitt Central at Central this Friday the 16th at Bullitt Central.
