Our first round playoff game was against La Sierra. We came into the game a little concerned because we had no football activity whatsoever for two weeks due to the bad fires around southern California, resulting in cancelled practices and games. We were supposed to play our last regular game last week against La Sierra, but that was cancelled. So we had no idea what the other team was like. But the coaches were thrilled to see that the passion and the fire was still obvious in the team’s eyes…the boys must have brought the fire with them from the southern California firestorm!

We kicked off first and our defense played out very well. La Sierra turned out to be a strong passing team, with their quarterback being similar to a certain famous quarterback, Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts. However, our boys were great in becoming brick walls and stopping their quarterback from moving the ball very much. Esau Zornoza made his first ever interception and ran for 50 yards with the stolen ball. He ran out of bounds with one yard left. On the next play, Esau finished what he started by scoring a touchdown and brought us out in the lead with a score of 6-0. Noah Valencia tried to add two points but failed.


This didn’t discourage the Cubs. We fought hard on defense and stopped La Sierra cold, allowing them to move only 10 yards. We then got the ball back, and Nathaniel Humpal did a wonderful job running for a 5-yard gain. After that, Marquise Weathersby, who we like to call the “Flash,” ran for 15 yards and made our second touchdown of the night, bringing the score to 12-0 in favor of the Mighty Cubs. And not only that, Esau added to our glory by scoring the two extra points to make it 12-0.

We punted and La Sierra finally had a good 45-yard run, but our wonderful defense, led by powerful Bailey Chmaj and Erik Murillo, loudly stopped the other team in their tracks with sacks galore.

Noah Valencia then made his very first interception (the Cubs’ second in this game!) and ran for 55 yards. He was stopped with 10 yards to go for another touchdown. On the next play, Noah got the ball and wrapped his interception up with a huge score to lead 20-0. Again, Esau added 2 extra points to make it 22-0. At this point, the team, the coaches, and even the fans were almost going crazy bursting with pride and spirit.

La Sierra struggled with their game, they could pass but they made a lot of errors. This helped the Cubs dominate. One of our players, Dawsen Bashaw, arrived a little late but he didn’t let that stop him. He made a 40-yard run, stopping 20 yards shy of a touchdown. We called a reverse play and it could have been great but unfortunately, we fumbled. However, it was still our ball. On the 4th down, the coaches told the Cubs to keep playing. Noah ran for 10 yards to help move the Cubs closer to another score and then Esau ran the next 5 yards to help bring the Cubs even closer. Noah then wrapped it up with a 5-yard touchdown and the score was 28-0. Marquise tried for the two extra points but La Sierra stopped him. And that was the game!

We are going to play in the second round of the playoffs. Our next opponent is Villegas Park. They beat us during our second game of the season, 14-0. Also, we did lose in our second round of the playoffs last year against Hunt. So we hope that we can break the curse with a win in the second round this time around! Our next game will occur on Saturday November 3 at 8 a.m. at Villegas Park. Please come and bring your full spirit with you!!!

We would like to extend extra-special thanks to our wonderful Elementary Cubbies cheerleading team for their best spirit. Their show during the halftime rocked big time! Also, we would like to thank Amelia Zornoza for bringing the team some drinks and snacks once again. And thanks to Marcus Chmaj for helping out with team spirit and coaching.

Jeremias Valencia “Coach V”