The football team opened up its season with a 47-41 win over Montgomery at Montgomery ISD Stadium on Aug. 29.  

Last year, the Panthers lost their season opener to Montgomery 28-26. 

“Since the summer and even the offseason we have been preparing mentally and physically for that game,” saud senior Cooper Wolocko, who rushed for 68 yards and had two rushing touchdowns. “It was a huge game for us and it really mattered a whole lot to a lot because last year we lost.” 

The team went into the game as underdogs with some online game projections giving Montgomery a 42-16 advantage.

“Whenever we’re looked at and we’re told that we’re only going to score 16 points and we’re going to let up 42, that’s personal,” Wolocko said.

Senior Dane Solomon said the team saw in the scouting reports that Montgomery graduated a lot of their seniors and were playing mostly new players from a year ago. The Panthers also had to adjust to new players on the roster, including new starting quarterback sophomore Jon Pavlatos.

“I think early we had a lot of struggles based on a lot of new guys coming up – a lot of JV guys that are on varsity now,” Solomon said. “But I think we grew up and we locked in.”

The team leaders told the younger players their one goal. 

“The emphasis this year is to really hammer down on just like believing that we can really beat any team that we go against,” Wolocko said.

The message seemed to be received. Pavlatos threw for 431 passing yards and added another 106 rushing yards to finish with four touchdowns.

“Running the ball, we struggled in that game,” Solomon said. “But we recognized that when they were stacking the box.”

The team overcame these problems by focusing more on their passing game.

“We recognized that their secondary was weaker, so we started throwing the ball a lot more,” Solomon said. “We were relieved and we were happy that we won, but we know we needed to clean some things up because Dayton isn’t going to be as easy as Montgomery was.”