
It’s been an up and down battle for the Golden Gales. The LHS Varsity football team started their season with a big win against Hillard Darby, then they took some big hits, losing another three games. Now they are up again with two wins back-to-back. With only two weeks left in the regular season, what do they need to do to save the season and get into the playoffs? And can they actually do it? Head coach Bryan Schoonover said he thinks the playoffs aren’t necessarily out of reach for the Gales.
“What are the chances that the Gales get into the playoffs? I think we’ve got to win out. I mean, I think if we win out, then we can sneak in. Football is a grind. It’s monotonous. You only play once a week. You don’t get to play multiple games. You gotta be mentally tough to do it. And it’s one of those things that can wear on you. And you can lose sight of what those goals are. But to finish strong would be players that embrace that, embrace struggle, enjoy it, attack it, and then go get it. I personally want us to finish as best as we can. I want our kids to play as hard as we can. I don’t think that we’ve played as hard as we could yet,” said Schoonover.
Assistant coach Vincent Albertini said that despite some losses, the team still has the potential to finish the season strong with more wins.

“Our goal is to win. The record doesn’t show it, but there have been points of improvement. There’s a lot we still need to improve on daily from top to bottom. Learning from your mistakes goes a long way, and that translates onto the field,” he said.
“This Friday, [we need to] go out and go off what we have done the past two weeks and get a win off of it,” said Albertini.

Running back, and one of the team captains Jahmeir Gordon said the team has more to work on to complete a winning season.
“For us to finish the season strong, we need to improve tackling and communication. I feel like the first couple of games we had a good positive mindset, but as we lost players to injuries, we started to doubt ourselves. We can make a good run. The rest of the teams we play are beatable, but we just have to put our all into it. We need to do our jobs, and we will be good—but if everyone is not on the same page, it’s gonna be hard,” said Gordon.

One of the team captains, Hunter Metz, said the team needs to finish strong and be accountable for the final games of the regular season to get to the playoffs.
“I think with the injuries and outcomes of the games, we feel sorry for ourselves; we expect someone to do the work for us. We need to get back to how we were the first few weeks and realize that we can win in any way, whether it’s an offensive shootout or a defensive battle,¨ said Metz.
The Lancaster Gales will play Canal Winchester this week at Canal and then Newark next week at Fulton Field. Metz said that the next games are do or die for the Gales.
“We’ve been a first-half team; we need to start hot right out of halftime. We have been flat in the second half, and the game is won in the fourth quarter. We need to go all in these last weeks because for the seniors that might be all we have left,” he said.