AJ Wolken staff writer
The varsity football team lost its first home game of the season to the Nordhoff Rangers 6-32 on Friday, Sept. 2.
Both teams came into the game 0-1, but Nordhoff pulled out a win to even their record to 1-1, dropping Beverly to 0-2.
The Normans started out hot, scoring just seven seconds into the game. Senior Michael Revah intercepted a screen pass on the opening play, and took it to the endzone to put Beverly up 6-0 early.
“We blitzed our backers and they tried to run a pass to the flat,” junior Thomas Goolsby said. “Revah was in the right place at the right time and he used his skills to score from there.”
On the ensuing drive, Nordhoff marched down the field and scored to go ahead 7-6. The score remained at 7-6 until the Rangers scored twice in the third quarter. The second of those two scores was a 52 yard touchdown pass, putting Nordhoff up 20-6.
“What happened was I didn’t see [the receiver] and I slipped. I just fumbled and I didn’t see that the receiver was coming on the backside of my hip,” junior Josh Johnson, the defender on the play, said.
Revah’s interception was the only touchdown Beverly got on the board all night. After that, Nordhoff proceeded to score 32 unanswered points.
“[After Nordhoff’s] second touchdown, that’s when our mental state was gone and we just didn’t have any fight left,” Johnson said.
Although the team lost by 26 points, head coach Steve Geanakos still took away positives from his team’s performance.
“We had a lot of really good performances. The defense played exceptional, they only really had a couple scores…through the first half things were good. We are struggling on the offensive side, the defense is playing well, and we will just pick it up from there,” Geanakos said.
Varsity football’s next game will be an away matchup against Malibu on Friday, Sept. 9 at 6:30 p.m.