By Sawyer Jordan
This school year has been a roller coaster ride for the Aptos High School football team.
The Mariners thank their home crowd after a big win against SCCAL rival Soquel.
When school originally went into lockdown in March of 2020, we decided as a team to do online Zoom workouts. Led by Coach Randy Blankenship, we trained all throughout the summer. Beginning at 8 a.m., we would work out for about an hour each morning.
These workouts were different every time, sometimes sets of pushups, sit-ups and squats. Sometimes it would be 2-3 sets of 10 different exercises.
Other times we would see who could get more sets done in a 20-minute period. Every day was different. On top of that, we were encouraged to train individually another hour or two each day.
At the beginning of the year, our coaches got even more creative; we sometimes used paint buckets, brooms, anything really that had weight on it. Challenging daily Zoom workouts became our new normal.
Senior Night Photo 2021: This group of seniors left a legacy of hard work and determination that will carry on for years to come.
On July 6, we were allowed to begin in-person practice to prepare for a September game, but sadly, both in-person practices and games were postponed due to the pandemic. In September, we came back again for in-person practices to prepare for a game in November. Again, our season was postponed.
To follow the health guidelines, we couldn’t even touch a football on the field or we would get in trouble. Eventually, these in-person practices were once again cancelled. We started practices once again around November. Our season was set to begin in January, and we were really looking forward to it. We were all pretty frustrated when it was postponed again. The roller coaster continued.
January came around, and after winter break we began in-person practices…again. It was a great day in February when we got the thumbs up from the school to practice in football pads. Then we knew it was real. This meant we were really going to have a football season!
Our shortened season kicked off with a team scrimmage.
For the next game we traveled to Watsonville to play Monte Vista Christian. There was so much hype for playing our first game at Monte Vista, because after practicing and working for over eight months to play football, we finally got to run and hit on the field again.
Mariners football coach Randy Blankenship dives into team huddle after the last game of the season at Santa Cruz High as the team said goodbye to seniors.
We took two different buses to Monte Vista, one bus was for the seniors and one bus was for the lower classmen. I was put on the senior bus because there wasn’t enough room on the other bus, but some of us played music and others were focusing and calming themselves for the game. It was a good game and really helped our whole team come together.
Our second game was against the Soquel Knights at our home stadium. We were also hyped for Soquel because there was a lot of talk coming from both schools. It was exciting to be back on our home field not only to play football but to also play on our brand new turf field, and it felt awesome to run out of the Aptos entrance again. It was also great to see parents and fans because we were not too sure if we would get people in the stands this year.
I remember how it was to run out on the field, going full speed, sprinting out to our sidelines while the crowd cheered for us. If someone asked me what happened on the first play, I couldn’t remember because of how much we just wanted to go out and play. Although we had a slow start, the game really took off during the second half and we ended up winning, 49-6.
Unfortunately, our third game was canceled.
Our next game was back at home against Watsonville High. Watsonville was a good game, we played our hardest with another winning result.
To end this bizarre season, we played our final game at Santa Cruz High School.
This was our craziest game by far, because on that day the buses and refs were scheduled for the wrong day, so we had to get our own rides to Santa Cruz and had some of the coaches become refs for the JV and Varsity game as a last-minute decision. Although it felt like it might never happen and it was shorter than normal, we had a fun, successful season.
The best photo we have of our team is when we all got together and took a huge team picture with Coach B on the field after the last game. We were all laughing and yelling, jumping on each other, and I think it captured all the release we had bottled up after such a long season of being told we would play, and then having it taken away, multiple times. Coach B jumping in on the pile at the end made it even sweeter.
Our coaches really hung in there with us through all of the ups and downs. We practiced year round to get here and they worked right alongside us. This was a season where every member of the team got to play at one point or another.
Although none of us would have planned it this way, I’m grateful we finally had a football season … and I’m not gonna lie, it was great to go 5-0. It was a really good way for our seniors to finish their final high school football season. We have a lot of very talented players among our seniors and they will be missed. We overcame challenge after challenge to get here and next year’s team will be even stronger for it.
As a final thought, our team would like to thank our family, friends, coaches and faithful fans for supporting us throughout this crazy season. Thank you to Mr. Fox and Ms. Pughe for all the support and drive to make our football season possible! Thank you parents for your support and guidance. We couldn’t have succeeded without you!
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Sawyer Jordan is a junior lineman for the Aptos High Mariners who transferred from Pitman High in Turlock
Photos by Denise Russo Photography