After earning their fourth consecutive win against Fort Zumwalt West the previous week, the Spartans faced an end to their winning streak last Friday against the Francis Howell Vikings. Losing 31-14, the Spartans walked off the field without the Gateway South Conference title they were anticipating.

Head Coach Todd Berck said how the team knew the match was going to be tough one going into the game, and how the team dealt with that during the game.

“We played a good football team. When you play a football team like that you have to play a really clean game. We did a lot of good things, but we also did a lot of things that we can’t afford to do,” said Coach Berck.

The second half was where the Spartans had their downfall. Throughout the third quarter both teams pushed each other up and down the field for the majority of the quarter, but the Spartans eventually let up on a few key plays in the middle of the quarter that allowed the opposing team to score. Despite holding the Vikings back for most of the half, the Spartans lost out on many opportunities for their own offense to move the ball up the field and were unable to score during the final two quarters of the game.

Coach Berck described the potential and momentum which the team had in the first half but lost in the second half.

“We had an opportunity [to win] when we [started] winning right in the first half, [but we] came out and had a big stop right at the beginning of the third quarter, and then kind of gave [the Vikings] the field [and] the momentum back when we didn’t move the ball and change the field,” said Coach Berck. “We kind of spent most of the game there into the field in the third and fourth quarter, so I thought that was a huge disadvantage on our part.”

The Spartans move on to their last home game against the Jackson Fighting Indians (currently 6-2) this Friday.

Live tweets over the game against Howell from activities director Scott Harris can be found here at: https://twitter.com/FHCAD