![]() This year, however, few of the Cougars are wearing them. San Lorenzo Valley blazed a new trail nearly three years ago, when it unveiled new cushioned caps covering its team’s football helmets, designed to limit the impact from blows to the head. Media coverage in recent years has put football injuries under a microscope, less for broken bones than for concussions and the degenerative neurological disease Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), which some researchers have linked to the sport. “I feel more bad for him than I do for the football team,” Scotts Valley Head Coach Louie Walters later tells me. The Falcons felt his absence immediately, but the tinges of pain run deeper than that. She would hate to see one of her kids get hurt, and she feels for Avalos and his family.īefore his senior season ever got properly underway, high school football is now over for Avalos, a two-way player who also played defensive end and was the team’s defensive player two seasons running. As much as she loves to see that her kids have taken to the sport, she says it’s impossible not to watch a little differently as a parent. Jennifer is a lifelong football fan who proudly rooted for the Wolverine during her time at the University of Michigan. Jennifer is here tonight at this August pre-season jamboree to watch one of her three kids-CJ, a San Lorenzo Valley High senior-play. Just a short time earlier, the entire scrimmage came to a halt when the Falcons’ Elias Avalos went down with a broken femur, stopping play for 15 minutes, while both teams waited for the offensive tackle, who eventually got wheeled off the field on a stretcher.īut it brings chills to sports super fan Jennifer Lang, a mom who’s standing just beyond the end zone a few yards away. The awe-inspiring catch from the high school senior brings an odd, bittersweet sense of relief to the crowd. Rajala launches a high-arching pass about a yard beyond Schwartz, who leaps into the air before making the catch and sliding to the artificial turf on the three-yard line, skidding forward as his body kicks up the rubbery pellets that fill the green Cabrillo College field. Tight end Will Schwartz is sprinting toward the end zone. Moments before Rajala reaches the sideline, he sees what he’s looking for: an open man. Rajala backpedals, spinning again-this time rolling to his left, with practically a third of the Santa Cruz High defense within arm’s reach, eager to bring him to the ground or at least chase him out of bounds. He starts sprinting forward, then hesitates. Rajala spins right and sees an opening, a gap between the linemen wide enough to drive a semi through. He catches the snap and immediately scans the field for an open receiver as his teammates sprint downfield, while a pocket of swarming defensive linemen collapses quickly around him. Scotts Valley quarterback Kyle Rajala stands five yards back from the line of scrimmage, his offensive team lined up in shotgun formation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |