As the sunsets on McCracken Field, the varsity team laces up their cleats. The roar of the fans echo in the stands as the starting varsity players line up to snap the ball, beginning MCHS’s beloved Friday night lights.

On August 30, MCHS’s varsity football team started their official season in a game against Hampshire High School. Hoping to make a comeback from the last season, football players and fans were excited for the first Friday night lights of the year.

“Obviously, as you can imagine, playing under the lights is amazing,” senior Connor Mclean says. “It just tops everything off with the big crowd, being a Friday and you playing the sport you love having it be under the lights is just a cherry on top”

Many fans are hoping for a bigger and better season than last year, meaning that the coaches are hoping to improve daily.

“I think a huge part of our improvement is simply age,” head coach Jeffrey Schroeder says. “We’ve returned a lot of starters who are one year older, hence bigger, stronger and faster. We’re still a pretty young team but so many of our juniors got so much varsity experience from last season that they are developing the ability to play a little older than they are.”

With the competition getting bigger, varsity quarterback Dayton Warren explains how their biggest competition seems to be themselves.

“Our biggest competition or opponent is ourselves,” Warren says. “If we don’t hurt ourselves by not doing the right thing on a play or don’t commit penalties and execute what we need to do every play we will hang with just about every team in the FVC.”

Unfortunately McHenry did lose 16-17 against Hampshire, but Schroeder can’t say the team didn’t have a great game.

“I’m happy we were more competitive, but I don’t think there’s a single player or coach on the team that didn’t feel we could have and probably should have won,” Schroeder says. “Our theme this year is “Run to the Storm”. What that means essentially is that the FVC is such a strong football conference that rather than fear it or back down from it we want to embrace the challenges and set expectations of winning or being extremely competitive every week regardless of who we play.”

With most of the eyes on the field, many players and coaches’ eyes were on number 22.

“It’s hard not to say Conor McLean didn’t improve the most,” Schroder says “He was good last year but his game on Friday was on another level.”

MCHS’s fans can’t wait to see how far the football team can go this season with all the improvement from coaches and players alike.