Football

Independence High School has a great football team with a lot of caring and loving boys on the it. Coach Shane Hagen and his assistent coaches work hard to help the team develop and grow. This season was kind of rough as they went 2-8 this year. 

Football started every week with morning practice at 5:30 a.m. Coach Hagen explained that “Monday, we will have either an agility or tackling circuit followed by individual sessions (quarterbacks with their QB coach, offensive line with their O-line coach, etc.) where they focus on position specific drills. We’ll spend about 15 minutes on each side of the ball individually, move on to Kickoff/kickoff return install, then end with an offensive and defensive team session.” This shows that they take their time with learning the plays for the game that week.

 According to Senior Frederick Solomon, the way he prepares mentally and physically for an important game is “ trying to envision myself on the field and making plays to which it helps the team with that I can kinda focus on afterwards, like how I would feel afterwards when we won.”  Him preparing like this clearly helps him clear his head and focus on getting the win for that game and physically being there for the team when he is needed for a play. 

 Senior Rayan Nelson,  says the way that he prepares for a game is “ I usually take a nap before every game and I just relax and listen to music.”  Rayan takes the time to reload his energy by taking a nap before the game and finds peace by listening to music before going on the field and playing in the game.

While this season was not the easiest for the varsity football team, they won one of the biggest games of their year against Glendale High School. The score was a close one, but at the end, the boys gave it their all,  put everything on line and won the game that night. The final score was 42-39. The final play put them over the top and won the game. The Patriots got to keep the pride  cup that gets passed between Independence and Glendale high school. 

Coach Hagen recognizes the team dealt with a lot of difficult situations that helped them keep the pride cup at Indy. He said, “I think we did some things that led us in the right direction during the Thunderbird/ALA West Foothills game that helped us keep the Pride Cup at Indy when we played Glendale.”  The teams used the game film from last week to prepare and learn from the mistakes that they made for the next game, and they did that which helped them win the game against Glendale high school.

 Nelson explains that “The Glendale game coming back from a huge deficit really took a lot of trusting the team and proving why we belong.” The team came together,  trusted each other and made the win that put tme over the top and showed the other teams that we have what it takes to beat the other teams we play throughout the rest of the season.