The varsity football team kept within one score of Oviedo for most of Friday night’s game at Sam Momary Stadium, but after two rushing touchdowns by Oviedo’s Keonte Coffie in the late third and early fourth quarters, the game got out of reach, and the team lost to Oviedo, 44-23.

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Quarterback Sammy Cordero converted two of four passes for 40 yards and led the team in rushing with 19 carries for 87 yards and a touchdown. Wingback D.J. McCunney was right behind Cordero, earning 66 yards on nine carries. He also rushed for a 23-yard touchdown, the team’s only score in the second half.

“We lost our fight a little bit,” McCunney said. “That can’t happen.”

The rest of the team’s points came from a 36-yard field goal by kicker Landon Spangenburg late in the first quarter and a 97-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by defensive back Ian Watts early in the second quarter.

Defensively, the team kept the game close in the first half, 23-17. However, in the second half, the team had trouble containing Coffie, who finished the game with 116 yards and three touchdowns, and the Oviedo passing attack led by Morgan Mitchell, who finished with 230 yards and two touchdowns through the air.

“The first half was ours,” Watts said. “When it came [to the] second half, we just fell apart.”

Despite the rivalry loss, head coach Phil Ziglar remains more focused on the team’s upcoming district games.

“I don’t think about [non-district games],” Ziglar said. “We were in the game all the way to the fourth quarter, then we made mistakes.”

The team hits the road next week to take on Lake Minneola in its first district game of the season.