On the night of October 22nd, Wilcox High School held its annual football game against its rival, Santa Clara High School, emerging victorious with a 35-0 score. Although the game started off slow with no team scoring any points in the first quarter, Wilcox started to pick up their pace during the second quarter by scoring a whopping twenty-one points while Santa Clara failed to score any. During the third and fourth quarters, Wilcox gained another fourteen points, finishing off the game with a celebratory win. As Wilcox has been holding this title for thirty consecutive years, the win was not a surprise to many of the players or spectators.

Varsity football player Iyaad Ahammed stated that they had not followed their initial plan of execution in the first quarter, causing the lack of points from their team. He further elaborated by stating that Varsity player Luther Gleen scored two touchdown runs in the second quarter. When asked about the response from Santa Clara’s football players, he stated, “Defense was tough all game, enforcing havoc on Santa Clara with multiple turnovers forced, the tipped pass by Alejiah Diaz caught by Jeremiah Lewis and the fumble recovery by Maludhi Saleh were key examples of this.” Even though Santa Clara put up a decent fight against Wilcox, they failed to score a single point throughout the game as Wilcox’s defense was undefeatable. 

Regardless of Wilcox’s streak, the football players still trained rigorously for this game as they did for any other, however, Ahammed stated that this game was different for the sole reason that “years of tradition and execution allowed our predecessors and alumni to win for thirty years in a row in the cross-town rival game and this trend is what we hoped to prolong.” Despite having historical superiority over Santa Clara, Wilcox players worked hard to continue upholding their thirty-year streak with the pressure of pleasing the students as well as themselves. 

 As a break from the pushes and shoves between the players, Wilcox’s halftime performance did not fail to leave everyone in awe. With the Chargerettes Drill Team starting off, they performed their usual military routine, ending with impressive handstands. The next performance was from the Wilcox cheerleaders where many of the girls were thrown up in the air left and right as they did impressive jumps and twirls. Lastly, the Song Pom team came out to the field with their white uniforms and performed a clean dance routine to a hip-hop song, leaving everyone dancing in their seats. While many students were viewing the performance, the line at the snack bar was bustling as hungry students scrambled to get food and drinks for the second half of the football game. 

Wilcox students were more than happy to attend their home football game as they were robbed from the typical high school experiences during the online school. Junior Anika Wahi shared her excitement of returning to the norm by stating, “I myself am not the biggest football fan but I could not help getting immersed into the sport when at the game with everyone. I missed the atmosphere of just being to hang with friends and little things like eating four dollar cheeseburgers and watching the sunset as the game began.” She further continues to express how memorable and enjoyable the overall experience was which made it her favorite game of all time. She acknowledged how she was not surprised when Wilcox had won against Santa Clara as they were already winning for quite a bit of time. Not only was Wahi happy to be back to enjoy the typical traditions of high school football, but many other students were excited as bleachers were swarming with spectators, leaving little to no room to sit comfortably. The football game had a theme, Black-Out, where everyone was encouraged to wear all black to display Charger spirit with the exchange of spectating the game for free. Not surprisingly, the bleachers were mostly filled with black clothes with the exception of glow in the dark sticks that were handed out by the ASB students. Despite knowing the outcome of the game, everyone was excited to return and enjoy the thirty-first annual rivalry game.