Football Goes 3-for-3 Against Rival Acalanes

Campolindo football competed against Acalanes on October 14 and 15, defeating them in Frosh, JV and Varsity games.

Freshman Ryan Rittmann said his highlight of the game was the “last final seconds of the game and winning.” Sophomore Pinkie Schayner agreed, saying the highlight of her game was “the team coming together and celebrating a big win.”

Senior Elijah Klock, Varsity team captain, had a different view as a senior, and said, “We were playing Acalanes and we wanted to make it special, because we’ve never beaten them on their field and we haven’t beaten them since 2015 so it was just really special, just getting out there with my friends and beating them.”

Although all 3 teams celebrated big wins, they each faced struggles throughout preceding practices and the game.

1 struggle the Frosh team had was figuring out the game plan during the first half. Rittmann said the team had “to come back in the second half after scoring 0 points.”

A challenge JV faced was being able to come “together and being able to connect as a team and work as a unit,” Schayner said.

Klock said, “I think our only problem going into the week and then throughout the game was ourselves. The opponent doesn’t beat us, we beat ourselves. And so the whole week of practice, we were just working on beating ourselves.”

While the Frosh game was held at Campolindo, the JV and Varsity teams had the added difficulty of playing on the Acalanes field. Schayner said being at Acalanes added more pressure because, “we wanted to beat them on their own turf so I feel like it definitely made us work harder.”

Klock added that the varsity team had a more positive mindset about the away game and said, “It’s always fun going over to Acalanes and playing because you got a lot of students yelling at you, heckling you, making fun of you, it was really fun. I love the atmosphere.”

Tough practices and positive attitudes helped lead all 3 teams to victory. Schayner said “hard work and dedication in the week of practices and just a lot of our practices, pushing ourselves” helped to lead the team to victory. Klock added, “We focused on ourselves, and we tried to play a faceless opponent, which really helped us in the long run.”

These 3 players all had different mindsets going into the game. Rittmann said that his mindset during the game was to “be physical and be confident.” Schnayer and the JV team had a different approach: “I think it was honestly just to win, and just to do the best we could, just like working together as a team.”

Klock said the Varsity mindset was to “just have fun.”