The Princeton High School football team, in its quest for a victory, has not stopped battling each week to overcome opponents.
The Little Tigers, who are 0-5, is coming off a 53-7 loss to Lawrence High School on Oct. 11.
Coaches and players are not giving up on the season and have said this Princeton team will continue to fight and battle back in each of the final three regular season games.
“After every game we like to think about the positive things that happened in the game, because we know we are getting better each week. We tell the guys we cannot hang our heads, we need to [raise] them high,” running back Stephen Avis said. “We just have to improve and do our job.”
The Little Tigers have offensively produced 15 points this season and are working on aspects of the offense each week in practice.
“Offensively, we have been trying more of pushing the pile and running hard to see what we can do. We just need everyone to keep their heads high and do their jobs,” he said. “We have a great group of guys. Each week we are trying to get better and we battle. We just want to see guy’s improvement. We want everyone to do their best, because we know if everyone is doing their best, good things will happen.”
Coach Charles Gallagher said the game of football is one of ebbs and flows with peaks and valleys.
“Right now there are definitely peaks and valleys,” Gallagher said. “The valleys for us unfortunately are these scores; the scores are no good. The players and coaches do not like them. The peaks are everything outside of the 48 minutes. This is a great group of kids to coach. The Mondays through Fridays are excellent. These guys really want to learn and believe in what we are doing.”
Gallagher said his team has a bunch of guys who are horses, but the team just does not have enough of them.
“We have a lot of young guys getting a lot of great reps. The greatness of our football team is the future and the future could be next week. That is the beautiful thing about football, you have to have a short memory,” he said.
For Gallagher, the Little Tigers have not been able to move the ball that much offensively, which he said has been a little disappointing.
“We helped our offense by putting our quarterback in the shotgun, it just has not worked out the way we want. We just want to see some growth throughout the season,” Gallagher said. “Defensively, we need to be better tacklers – bottom line. Our coaches do a great job of putting guys in the right spots, it is now up to the guys making plays defensively. We have to make tackles and swarm to the ball.”
He explained that he wanted the team to do a better job in all phases of the game.
“We have to be able to run the ball better and throw the ball better. The kids want to do it, it is just about execution. If we can be better in practice when it comes to tackling it will translate well,” Gallagher said. “This is a learning curve. A lot of guys here are new to the game of football. We have to go to the drawing board and find a way to get a win.”
Princeton’s next matchup is a road contest at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School on Oct. 18 at 7 p.m.