With the adversities the team faced throughout the beginning of the season, Head Football Coach Jeff Hulme prepares the team to overcome these challenges by looking ahead to the future, rather than sulking in the past.

“Everybody’s got to be rising up together. It can’t be one of those things where we have just a few doing it and then the other few hanging their head being negative about it,” Coach Hulme said. “We’ve all got a positive state, and we’ve all got to have the right motivation to keep moving forward.”

In the first game of the season, the Broncos lost a number of important players to injury. Starting sophomore quarterback Jake Jenkins suffered a broken tibia in the first quarter of the game, along with University of North Texas commit Jaden Manning who fractured his fibula. Along with those blows, starting defensive end senior Immanuel Moore tore his ACL during the week-one defeat. Despite losing quality starting players, Coach Hulme looks for the rest of the team to pick up the slack.  

“We have to hit the ground running,” Coach Hulme said. “We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We can’t pout. We got to go with the next man up mentality and get after it.” 

Considering all struggles, the one common goal amongst the entire team and the coaches is to win. To accomplish this goal, many new starters are expected to perform past expectations and adjust to the new roster changes.

“I think our future looks bright,” Coach Hulme said. “It’s going to be a way to get some younger, inexperienced players some playing time.” 

“We need our next best guys to step up and play at the best level,” senior captain Xander Walker said. “We are looking for how our team will work after missing these guys but also we are looking to improve on mistakes that were made.”

 Walker looks to simplify the game for himself, going back to the rudimentary mentality for the rest of the season. 

“I really had to work on my mental side and go back to my fundamentals that I’ve been doing since I was a kid and remember to play like I’m in elementary school, just having fun making big-time plays because that’s when I play my best for my team,” Walker said. “I would give the same advice: stick to fundamentals and play for the brother beside you.” 

Despite the change of pace to the team and depth chart, Coach Hulme remains confident in the rest of the season.

“When you lose a game, the way we did by losing a couple of players to injury, it’s like getting punched in the gut. Takes your breath away a little bit,” Coach Hulme said. “But then you got to, regroup. You got to pick your head up and go back to work.”