The Highland Rams suffered its first loss of the season in a nonconference game against the Olympus Titans tonight with the final score 5 to 3. As Coach Benson indicated postgame it looked more like a baseball score. But a 5-3 baseball game would have provided the audience a much more entertaining offensive game than what was witnessed Friday night. At halftime a mischievous fan lit a smoke bomb, also known as a stink bomb in the Highland student section, which seemed to be symbolic of the game tonight. The lack of points is not a result of a lack of effort. Both teams wrestled mightily to move the ball. There were good hits and great tackles, but ultimately they were unable to push it across the line. Drive after drives were stymied by self inflicted penalties. Here a hold, there a hold, everywhere a hold-hold. Coach Benson felt that the players were uncharacteristically nervous. As the team gels and mistakes are corrected the talent on this team leaves fans optimistic that a deep playoff run is still in our future.

“We got to find our identity as a football team and understand that there is a whole lot of work and grind that goes into this. We have the potential to have a very explosive offense- we saw this last week. Defensively we have some great guys in some great positions and for whatever reason tonight we stressed and we played nervous. Olympus did a great job of keeping us on our heals especially on our offense. We did not look like we knew what was going on all night,” Coach Benson said.

Following a safety near the end of the first half the Rams showed great character by driving the length of the field to kick a field goal to take the lead 3-2 going into halftime.

In the second half Olympus responded with a drive of its own. But the Rams goal-line stand forced a field goal. Unfortunately those points proved to be the difference. The Rams were able to push the ball inside Olympus 30. Cameron Keyvani narrowly missed a 45 yard field goal. He had plenty of leg but it went left, barely left.

“After the game there was a lot of disappointment. We knew as a team we didn’t do as well as we wanted and we shot ourselves in the foot,” Lilo Clark, one of the team captains said.

There seems to be a lot of disappointment concerning Friday’s game.

“We didn’t play up to our full potential. We killed ourselves on penalties and couldn’t string together our offensive drives. Our success starts in practice and in order to bounce back for next week we need to dial in and have our best week of practice of the year,” Ben Berg said.

The Rams hope to improve the mistakes made tonight in order to bounce back for next Friday’s game against Skyview.