Friday nights under the lights return this week. The Fountain Hills High School football team will host the Chino Valley Cougars at 7 p.m. this Friday, Aug. 19, to start the regular season at home.

All Fountain Hills Unified School District students, grades K through 12, get into each home football game for free. Bachelor’s Pad BBQ will have a food truck at the first three home games, and the Booster Club will be doing a 50/50 raffle at the home opener. Desert King Falconry will also be in attendance before the game with a real falcon to do a flyover before kickoff.

Seniors want to capitalize on their last year and underclassmen are looking to make a name for themselves. The Falcons put in a lot of offseason work with their new head coach, Sean Moran, and the players feel that everyone has bought into his program and this season.

“He’s bringing everyone together,” senior Casey Osborne said about Moran. “We created a way bigger brotherhood than last year.”

Moran did a lot of small things in the summer practices that motivated the Falcons. He got every player and coach new Falcon football team shirts and he put a clock in the weight room that has been counting down the days and minutes until kickoff this Friday.

After Chino Valley, the Falcons will have two away games at Dysart and Scottsdale Christian Academy. The Falcons will host five of their 10 games, and the next home game is against Marcos de Niza on Friday, Sept. 9, at 7 p.m. The Falcons will end their season at home against Valley Christian on Thursday, Oct. 27.

Last year, the Falcons also played Valley Christian in the last game of the season. The Trojans and the Falcons are the only two teams that stayed in region 3A Metro East from last year to this year. The new region opponents are Payson, Phoenix Christian, Tempe and Arizona Lutheran Academy.

Arizona Lutheran won the 2A state championship last year and moved up a conference, and Tempe went 0-8 and moved down from 4A. The other teams were in different 3A divisions last year. Fountain Hills lost the Battle of the Beeline rivalry game with Payson last season, but this year the game will have region implications, and the Falcons hope to have a different outcome.

“We’re going to be juiced up no matter what,” Moran said. “Our goal is to never lose a rivalry game. Our goal is to make it not a rivalry.”

The Falcons were not able to reserve a time for Camp Tontozona this summer, something Moran would like to do next summer, but he did get some players in a tournament earlier in June.

“We played in a seven-on-seven tournament,” senior quarterback Spencer Nelson said. “[We went] into it a little bit iffy. We didn’t really know the plays, but we made it to semifinals.”

According to Nelson, the chemistry he has with his receivers helped make up for not knowing all the new plays at that point. Nelson has several fellow senior targets this year, and he has a few younger receivers to work with as well.

Seniors Ryan Dyhrkopp and Diesel Giger were starting receivers, and senior Gavin Furi was the starting running back in the summer tournament. Seniors Jentezen Behnke and Casey Osborne will also line up at receiver this season, and according to Moran, sophomore Sam Barnard and junior Gannon Young showed a lot of promise over the summer and are expected to be good pass catchers this season.

“I feel like our chemistry is all really good,” Nelson said. “These guys are my main friends. I grew up with these guys. People like Ryan and Diesel are also going to be big targets.”

Fountain Hills did not have a band teacher this summer, but James Morales was hired on Aug. 8. Morales previously worked at Fountain Hills Middle School and helped with the high school marching band. He and his wife, Lynn Truby, led the Falcons to win the 2018 ABODA Marching Band State Championship. Morales will teach both middle and high school band this year, and he is expected to have the marching band ready for this Friday.

The Falcons got on the field in a scrimmage against Shadow Mountain High School last Friday, Aug. 12. The Falcons were excited to test their skills in a game rather than a practice, and they’ll be excited for every game this season, starting with Chino Valley on Friday.

“I will say, every single game, these boys are going to be juiced up,” Moran said. “They’re ready for every workout, they’re ready for every film session we have. When the Friday night lights turn on, those boys are going to be ready to go.”