The 2021 Fall football season didn't open the way the St. Joseph Knights would have liked, falling in their opening three matchups to Charter Oak, Frontier, and Centennial.
The Knights season over the past two weeks has completely flipped the script.
"The first couple of weeks we had a lot of young men in critical positions that were learning and developing. We always talk about how it's not how you start, it's how you finish. The teams that we were playing were really well coached and had some talent and I think they were good tests for our team," said St. Joseph Head Football Coach Pepe Villasenor.
Following an 0-3 start to the 2021 regular season, the St. Joseph Knights have secured back-to-back wins over Santa Teresa and St. Margaret’s.
“At practice we work hard. The first three games we didn’t try to forget about because we used that to build up,” said senior wideout Travis Royal.
“The team is young, and everyone held themselves accountable for all of the losses, it wasn’t a blame it on this person or that person,” said senior running back Anthony Moreno.
The Knights say those tough opening matchups have helped prepare them for the second half of their season.
“It gives our team, especially our young team, the opportunity and experience and the level of anxiety and tightness that maybe you get in a tight game or towards the end of a game,” said Villasenor
With the expectations incredibly high, the Knights say they’ll use the recent victories as a standard for the rest of the season.
"It just shows this team is resilient and with those three games, win or lose, we were going to stay together as a team. We took the best things from those games and continued to go off those and get rid of the bad things," said Moreno.
“We’re going to learn from them, not get on a high horse and pretend that we’re better than everybody. We’ve got a lot of humility,” said Royal.
The Knights will look for their third straight win when the face Paso Robles Friday.
