When Santa Rosa head coach Arturo Garcia steps onto the field for the annual Sugar Bowl tonight, he will do so knowing that he did everything he could to prepare his team to go out and perform to the best of their ability.
And, he will know that La Villa’s head coach Joe Salinas has done the same to his.
“Well like any other game it’s a chance for us to get better against a quality opponent,” said Coach Garcia. “We have a lot of respect for La Villa, they have a strong football history and we’re going to be ready for them.”
In a game like the Sugar Bowl records are thrown out the window, because what happened last week doesn’t matter today. Last weeks struggles and last weeks victories only help to strengthen today’s game plans.
While history might reveal that the visiting team has won the last five encounters, everybody at Warrior Stadium will know that history was made to be broken.
There are no ‘do over’s’ and there are no ‘rematches’ one season, one game.
After starting the season on a winning note, the Cardinals have lost their last two games against Taft and Brownsville St. Joseph.
Offensively, La Villa has accumulated 774 yards of total offense, with 545 of them coming on the ground. On defense the Cardinals have given up a total of 1044 yards with 773 coming against the run.
On the other side of the field Santa Rosa has accrued 568 yards with 290 coming threw the air.
“I see it as another Friday night football game,” said senior Wally Olivarez. “We’re going to try and get the ‘W’ and improve our record to 2-2.”
Olivarez, who got injured in the first series of plays against Rio Hondo and still has that lingering injury. When asked Olivarez admits, “he’s still not 100 percent and just plays through the pain”.
“The scores might not show it but the defense has been playing really well, just little mistakes here and there,” said Olivarez. “”This past week we got the ball moving better on offense and on defense we also did a lot better.”