The seniors on the Fountain Hills High School football team have dealt with a maddening amount of turnover, having a new head coach three of the past four years. The Falcons lost 42-6 to Marcos de Niza last Friday, Sept. 9, and their record dropped to 1-3, but the Falcons are still bought in to first-year head coach Sean Moran’s program.

Moran said that the out of conference game last Friday was one of the toughest challenges Fountain Hills will face this season. The Falcons were down 42-0 at the half, but the message from Moran was clear; win the second half.

“It’s 42 to nothing at halftime, we went out there and didn’t let up another score and scored a touchdown,” Moran said. “They played hard till the end. I think trying to get better is a process. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

The Falcons started the second half with the ball and drove down the field to score. It wasn’t a perfect drive, but the Falcons overcame three penalties and capped it off with a 23-yard touchdown pass to junior Gannon Young.

Senior quarterback Spencer Nelson scrambled for six yards after the first false start to begin the third quarter, and on third and short, Nelson found senior Diesel Giger for a 25-yard gain. Later on, in that same drive on third and eight and third and 10, Nelson found Young for first down catches of 16 and 11 yards before Young found the endzone.

“It was a pretty difficult first half,” Young said. “Then the second half we came out and tried to have fun and make some plays. It was tough with the weather and the defenders on me all night with press man, but we got around it on a couple of plays.”

Fountain Hills was overcast and windy on Friday, and it was tough to throw an accurate pass in those conditions during the first half. Marcos de Niza had the same issue as the Falcons, but the Padres were able to establish their run game on the first drive. The Padres had the ball first and exclusively ran the ball on their first drive. The Falcons forced a third down at the goal line, but the Padres scored on each of their possessions until late in the second quarter.

In the last five minutes of the first half, down 42-0, the Falcons kept their composure, and the Padres did not. Nelson took a late hit as an unprotected player on the ground on third down and Marcos de Niza was flagged for unnecessary roughness. The Falcons continued to drive but punted the ball with barely a minute left, and another unnecessary roughness penalty on the Padres kept them from scoring in the final minute. An assistant coach for the Padres was also ejected shortly before halftime for reportedly yelling derogatory statements at a referee.

“What we saw Friday night was probably one of the toughest challenges we’ll see all year,” Moran said. “The fact that we got out of there healthy, the fact that we went out there and didn’t hang our heads and quit and we kept playing and we tried to beat them in the second half, I think that says a lot.”

The Falcons did their best to work around the size difference the 4A team had over them. Senior offensive lineman Wyatt Mowers said the defense blitzed seven or more defenders frequently, but the Falcons only lost the sack battle two to one thanks to senior Gavin Furi.

“A few of them, they could run fast,” Mowers said. “They blitzed a ton, and it was kind of hard to pick up. We also had [sophomore] Aiden Cronican come in at tackle, which helped, but he’s not a lineman, so he doesn’t know all of the plays. It definitely helped, and we pushed one of them down pretty good, 20 yards back and into the dirt.”

Furi returned to the field for the first time since week one and was the go-to pass catcher on screen plays in the first half. Nelson said he probably has the best chemistry he’s ever had with a running back with Furi, and Furi also recorded a sack in the final minute of play after fellow senior Ryan Dyhrkopp got a tackle for loss on the Padres running back.

Dyhrkopp filled in for Furi in his absence but continued to impact the game with Furi back in. Dyhrkopp recovered a fumble in the third quarter, and fellow senior Nick Ireton is also starting to garner attention from his teammates on defense.

The Falcons switched their offensive play designs to be more similar to Moran’s play calling at Shadow Mountain last week and he saw a few good results on the field, and more on film. Moran said that it’s clear that the system “clicks” with his offensive players, and they’ll need to build on it ahead of the region schedule.

The next three games are all against region opponents for the Falcons. Starting this Friday, Sept. 16, Fountain Hills will travel to Arizona Lutheran Academy and take on the Coyotes (3-0) at 7 p.m.

“We beat a 4A team in the second half,” Nelson said. “We ran our offense pretty well. I think we can build on that, carry it into Lutheran.”