{"id":24114,"date":"2017-08-06T15:08:25","date_gmt":"2017-08-06T22:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/falcons-look-to-repeat-as-conference-champs\/"},"modified":"2017-08-06T15:08:25","modified_gmt":"2017-08-06T22:08:25","slug":"falcons-look-to-repeat-as-conference-champs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/falcons-look-to-repeat-as-conference-champs\/","title":{"rendered":"Falcons look to repeat as conference champs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A half hour in to practice on Thursday evening, Thunder Mountain High School head football coach Randy Quinto works out his receivers.<\/p>\n<p>Under blue skies and unusually warm temperatures for high school football season, which officially began a week before, Quinto stands outside of a small rectangle of violet training cones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFire out, fire out, faster,\u201d Quinto says as 14 Falcons take turns running the drill. His receivers form a line and take off eight feet from the catch zone, designated by the cones. Quinto tosses the football at their shins, then a few feet above their helmets and finally a step behind them.<\/p>\n<p>Standing first in the line, demonstrating the most fundamentally-sound catches is senior Jacob Tapia.<\/p>\n<p>Tapia, one of three returning all-state Falcons on the team from last season, says the team is like a brotherhood.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithout football, I probably wouldn\u2019t be talking to these guys,\u201d Tapia said, referring to his other two all-state teammates Roy Tupou and Ivan Williams.<\/p>\n<p>TMHS\u2019 cohesiveness has helped the program improve every year since Quinto became head coach in 2015. Two years ago the team went 4-5 and made the playoffs for the first time in program history. Last year, they made it back to the playoffs, this time as the No. 1 seed by taking the Southeast Conference, but were quickly booted out once there. They fell to Palmer 28-26 after turning the ball over with three minutes left in the game on a fourth-and-2 play.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreat effort by the boys,\u201d Quinto said of the game. \u201cThis senior group, my juniors last year, they sat in that locker room still with their gear on and said, \u2018Coach, this isn\u2019t going to happen again.\u2019 So they have a mission \u2014 they have a mission to not only to get to the state title but it to knock off Soldotna.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/juneauempire.com\/sports\/2017-08-06\/renewing-team-unity-crucial-crimson-bears\" target=\"_blank\">JDHS 2017 Football Season Preview: Renewing team unity crucial for Crimson Bears<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>The Soldotna Stars have won the last five medium school football titles. Not only that, they have won a mind-boggling 49 straight games.<\/p>\n<p>This season, the Falcons won\u2019t face the Stars like they have in past seasons. But to go very far in the playoffs, TMHS will have to take down the Stars sooner or later.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe made the playoffs two years in a row now, so now hopefully we can go further in the playoffs,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n<p>The Stars eliminated TMHS from the 2015 postseason with a 49-13 win at Dimond High School.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean, no team\u2019s beaten them yet,\u201d Tupou said. \u201cWhy can\u2019t we be that team to beat them? So, we just have to keep working hard. We have to go 100 percent every day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have to go in with that mentality that you\u2019re going to beat them, because if you don\u2019t then you already lost. There\u2019s no point in showing up,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>There will be plenty of tests for TMHS before a potential matchup with Soldotna. First up is South Anchorage on Aug. 12. Quinto said one of the team goals this year is to defeat a 4A (large schools) team. The first game of the season will be their only opportunity to do that.<\/p>\n<p>The Falcons will miss the play of projected starting quarterback Owen Mendoza against the Wolverines. Last year\u2019s starting quarterback Cale Jenkins graduated in the spring. Mendoza\u2019s football season was put on hold as his American Legion baseball season went a week longer than normal.<\/p>\n<p>Besides Jenkins, other graduates from the team include wide receivers Riley Olsen, Garth Tupou and tight end Mahina Toutaiolepo.<\/p>\n<p>TMHS will play host to Kodiak, Juneau-Douglas High School and Ketchikan this season at Falcon stadium.<\/p>\n<p>2017 Season Schedule<\/p>\n<p>Aug. 12 @South Anchorage 3 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Aug. 18 Kodiak, 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Aug. 25 Bye<\/p>\n<p>Sept. 1 Juneau-Douglas, 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Sept. 8 @Ketchikan, 6 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Sept. 15 @North Pole, 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Sept. 22 Ketchikan, 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Sept. 29 @Juneau-Douglas, 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>\u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nolin.ainsworth@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A half hour in to practice on Thursday evening, Thunder Mountain High School head football coach Randy Quinto works out his receivers. Under blue skies and unusually warm temperatures for high school football season, which officially began a week before, Quinto stands outside of a small rectangle of violet training cones. \u201cFire out, fire out, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":24115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24114"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}