In the aftermath of last week’s opening season loss, South Pasadena High Football Coach Jeff Chi made it clear to his team that there’s plenty of time to see improvement, outscore opponents with regularity, and come away with more defeats than losses over the next nine games.

“There are a lot of high school football games,” said Chi. “There are some winners and there are some losers. The season is long from being over either way. If you won, those teams are excited. But if you lost, it feels bad, but there’s plenty of time to improve and see how far you can take it from that point on.”

So, what’s next for Chi’s unit as it gears up to take on Arcadia Friday night under the lights at home in a 7 p.m. encounter at Ray Solari Stadium?

“Our goal is to individually improve, collectively as a team improve, and we just need to get better and better,” insisted the Tigers’ coach. “The kids are working hard. We could tell that some of our guys were a little nervous, playing varsity for the first time and they recognized the speed of the game is faster than when they played on the JV. It’s going to take them a little while to get used to playing varsity. So, we have to be patient with them.”

Chi stressed the objective is to have his team ready for the Rio Hondo League campaign and potentially winning the crown.  Ahead of that, however, are four more non-league games starting with Arcadia, a team that will be kicking off its season, not having a scheduled game last week.

“I think Arcadia has a similar makeup as our team,” Chi explained. “They have a lot of young guys on their squad as well. For us having one game under our belt, hopefully we will have an advantage. It’s important we take care of our mistakes, and fix it. I imagine it will be somewhat of an even match. So, we have to be ready for them.”

The Tigers will want to prevent a second half outburst this week after what happened last Friday when Schurr scored four touchdowns over the final two periods, one in the third quarter and three more in the fourth during a 28-0 setback to the Spartans.

Chi and his coaching staff are doing all they can to get a struggling offense untracked, one that had five turnovers against Schurr, which he noted, won the line of scrimmage battle.

“We made a lot of inexperienced mistakes,” said the coach. “It could have made the game a little closer. That’s something we have to fix.”

Tigers quarterback Zachary Lee, under pressure much of the night, connected on nine of his 14 passes for 95 yards, but among his misfires were two interceptions.

The mindset for Chi’s squad will be to put the first game behind them and concentrate on what’s ahead. Following Friday’s game against the Apaches, South Pasadena is home for two more weeks – Crescenta Valley September 6 and Golden Valley September 13 – before traveling to Alhambra on September 20. After a week off, the Tigers are then home to play Pasadena Poly on October 4 in the Rio Hondo League season opener. On October 11, they travel to San Marino to take on their rival, return home on October 17 and October 25 for matchups against Monrovia and Temple City, respectively, and then go to La Canada on November 1 to wind up the regular season. All games start at 7 p.m.

“I believe the Rio Hondo League is going to be very competitive,” Chi said. “You can’t have an off week. Otherwise, you’re not going to have a chance to win the title. We’re going to have to be on top of it every week.”

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