Stagg football players had their senior night this Friday. Before the game started and the national anthem was played, the senior players got called one by one, where they had a brief summary shared about their plans after highschool.
There was a total of 13 senior players: Team captain Luis Nolasco, Jayden Moses, Jonathan Gladney, Marquise Thomas-Gray, Labron White, Freddie Garcia, Ronald Martin, Joey Olacio, Ramon Mora-Campos, Aloysis Tih, Bradley Mertz, Keith White and Jeremiah Singleton. The senior players got to walk out towards their family that was waiting for them with posters, flowers and balloons.
Jayden Moses started playing for Stagg his junior year and continued playing his senior year as well. He plans to continue playing football after highschool and has hopes of playing at Sterling college.
Football has helped his mentality and his ability to be criticized, it’s helped him grow. “Football has helped me grow as a person because you have to have integrity and accountability, you have to be able to take getting yelled at and be able to be disciplined,” Moses said.
Moses believes that the team will be fine without the seniors next year because of the players that stepped up and took on positions that were opened up due to the many transferring players and graduated ones.
“A lot of the sophomores that were supposed to play JV this year stepped up and they proved that they could do it as sophomores so I’m confident that they’ll succeed next year without us,” he said.
One of Moses’s teammates Dallas Prak, a junior at Stagg, noticed that Moses earned a spot on the team almost instantly when he arrived at Stagg.
“He’s always been the uplifter ever since he came in, he’s been like the motivator and pep talker,” Prak stated.
As for the Varsity cheerleaders, they didn’t get the chance to walk on the field to their families, but the senior cheerleaders got their own performance during halftime. It started off with the varsity cheerleaders performing as a whole and then it went onto the seniors performance done by Elideth Romero, Aneesa Mungia, Darrian Hazard, Trinity Nyguen, Adriana Navarec and Monica Sanchez.
Elideth Romero, the Varsity cheer captain, started cheering her freshman year and continued on cheering the next 3 years. She made junior varsity the year she started and her next three years were on varsity.
Being a part of something and have seeing the team grow and improve gave Romeo a different connection with the other members and the coach. Coach Joy and Romero have worked together for four years and they’ve helped each other out. Coach Joy has been a mentor to Romero these past years, she has been some Romero can rely on and go to whenever she needs something.
Speaking about Coach Joy, Romero said, “She’s like a second mom to me, because whenever I need something she’s always been there to show me what’s right and what’s wrong.”
Coach Joy Rialubin Trejo has known Romero since her freshman year, and this year Trejo named Romero the leading varsity cheer captain. Over time she’s seen Romero grow as a cheerleader, she’s noticed Romero’s leadership potential and admires the maturity and focus that she has.
“The thing that makes Ellie such a fantastic leader for this group is that she stays centered on the work, she stays centered on making sure that her teammates are focused and keeps them on task,” said Trejo.
She also stated how Romero has become her teams advocate and someone they can look up to,
“She really does just take care of this team, they look to her leadership and they listen to her, and I feel like they do it out of respect for her,” Trejo said.
Romero has not only grown closer to Coach Joy, but she has also built friendships and taken other cheerleaders under her wing. She been their leader and has helped be a mentor like Coach Joy said. She wants to let cheerleaders that aren’t seniors know how thankful she is for them and to go for what they want.
“Don’t let fear hold you back from being the greatest you can be, you guys [cheerleaders she has befriended] have built an amazing sisterhood for me, always keep being the genuine and caring people you all are.” Romero said.
