The varsity football team suffered their first loss this season on Friday, Sept. 16 against State College 55-14. The team had three wins back to back.

“We had a good start. We won our first three games and just had a slip up against State College… We didn’t prepare our kids well enough for that,” head coach Vince Nedimyer said.

Senior Tyson Reid believes that State College came more prepared than Altoona.

“It was a rough one, and we didn’t come prepared. They were the better team that night,” Reid said.

The team plans to use this loss to learn from the mistakes they may have made.

“…You just got to learn from the losses. If you use them as a learning experience, at least you get something out of it,” senior Manuel Miller said.

Senior Nicholas Hogan believes there is nothing the team can do about their loss other than get better and move on.

“You never want to lose, but we got to get better and move on. There is nothing we can do about it,” Hogan said.

The team believes they had a few disadvantages with this game, but they still felt the same going into it as they do every other game.

“Definitely them being a bigger team, but we thought it wasn’t too big that we couldn’t overcome,” Hogan said.

“It’s the same we feel every week, especially when we get into our conference play. We know that every week is going to be a dog fight. We’re prepared for that. Regardless whether it’s a win or loss, we need to have a short memory with both and move on and get ready for the next opponent,” Nedimyer said.

The coaches only ever worry about their team, never the opposing team.

“We worry about ourselves. We don’t get too worried about what the other team is going to do. We watch film on them. We always just tell our kids if we just do what we’re coached to do, and we have solid assignments. We’ll be in a position to win the game,” Nedimyer said.

Nedimyer says the coaching staff plans not to treat this week differently than any other week.

“We meet and watch film and discuss what we think is best going into the game. It’s pretty much a weekly meeting,” Nedimyer said.

The athletes worried about their own defense and whether they’d have enough to go against the other team.

“Our formations, like if we were lining up right and if they came out in different formations. Were we going to have the personnel to match up against them,” Reid said.

“State College is a really good team and they were definitely prepared for us. We weren’t ready for the game. The score showed that we weren’t prepared,” Reid said.

Miller says how they played doesn’t represent how the team actually is.

“I think it was a poor performance by us. I think that it doesn’t represent who we are as a team. We are definitely better than we played. When we play them again, that will not be the outcome. It will not be a 55-14 game,” Miller said.