It was a crispy, sunny Saturday afternoon when Bartlett’s diehard fans bustled into their brand new football stadium. The home stands were packed full of gold and blue students, teachers, families and fans, which were expecting to crush the West Side Eagles. On the other side of the field, West’s fans sported their orange and black.

It was a rough start for West’s first-string quarterback, Sean Duffy, but he managed to get West on the scoreboard by the first quarter. It was clear that Bartlett was hungry to dominate at their homecoming game and was not about to back down to the Eagles.

Duffy took quite a few hits but managed to get the ball out and help advance the play before he went down. “The team who has the legs…are going to win this game,” Varsity coach Timothy Davis told the boys.

When asked how Davis thought West’s team played as a whole, he said “the team…showed a lot of heart, and a lot of love for each other…they had their minds in the exact right spot, and that was a wonderful thing to see.”

During half time after Bartlett’s Homecoming court was introduced, Bartlett’s cheerleading squad came out and pumped up the Bartlett crowd. The Bears came out to dominate their Homecoming game and take the win.

During the “dogfight” of a game, a few Bartlett players sacked Duffy and took him down at the 35-yard line. West held its breath for about a two minutes while Duffy stayed down. The paramedics rushed over to assess his sustained injuries. After Duffy managed to walk himself off field with only a little help from teammates he sat down and was holding his head. Sam Wedin warmed up and prepared to play for the first time since the beginning of the season.

It seemed that since the first whistle Wedin was on the field, the team responded and started playing together again.