Bear River’s Varsity Bruin football team faced off against the Encina Bulldogs in the Homecoming game on Friday, September 14th, winning in a triumphant victory of 54-0.

Senior Austin Slining showed pride in how the team performed during the game.

“I think it went really well, everyone did their job,” he said. “It wasn’t the greatest team in the world to be playing, it was a great team to play on Homecoming. Everyone did their job and we won the game, which was the goal.”

Some students said that they agreed with this.

“It went just as planned,” Senior Dylan Bergez-Scott said. “We went out thinking, ‘We can’t disrespect them and we have to respect them just like we do any team we play.’ So, we came out strong and just played our game and won.”

Varsity Coach Scott Savoie believes that they couldn’t have done any better.

“I thought our team played really well, and I thought that Encina struggled in the game, but their sportsmanship was great,” he said. “Our kids didn’t have any problems with them.”

Sophomore Warren Davis did not express the same opinion.

“It could’ve gone better if we kept in our first string the entire game,” Davis said. “We could’ve gone 80 to 0.”

Slining said that he was happy with the outcome of the game.

“I felt good,” he said. “I felt that I made a few mistakes, but, going into next week, we’ll try to eliminate those mistakes.”

Davis said something similar, also feeling that though the team as a whole did well, he had improvements he could have made. 

“I felt great starting my second game of the year, as a sophomore,” Davis said. “I, however, don’t think I played my best, and I could’ve played better, but it was still a great game.”

Coach Savoie said that while each player put in effort, some especially stood out to him.

“I was pretty happy for Shelbi Beghetti,” he said. “… We gave her a chance to run the football, I thought she did a really good job … There were a slough of guys, I thought, that played well … Honestly, I can’t think of anybody on the team that didn’t. It was a complete and total team win.”

One student described their favorite moment of the game.

“Scoring my touchdown was probably my favorite moment.” Bergez-Scott said.

While the first games of the football season have been won, the season has yet to reveal how the team will fare.

“We’re undefeated, and we’re going to be playing another undefeated team next week at home,” Slining said. “It’s going to be a great game, a tough game, probably the toughest game we’re going to have this year.”

Coach Savoie encouraged Bruins to come to the games and show school spirit.

“Come on out,” he said. “We’ve got a game, not this Friday, but the Friday after. It’s going to be a big one, we’re playing Center. We need … Bear River kids dressed up in cardinal and grey and black out there going crazy and having a good time.”