Prairie View High School Football looks to bounce back from a rough 2020 abbreviated season
HENDERSON, Colo. — COVID-19’s long and ever reaching impacts are still being felt all around the world. Everyone’s life changed drastically, seemingly overnight, and nearly everyone never knew when or even if things would ever go back to “normal.”
A year and a half later though, strides in the correct direction are being made. It would be a stretch to say that everything is back to “normal,” but things are heading in that direction and are looking more “normal” than they ever have before.
Travel is starting to get back into full swing, restaurants are getting closer to full capacity, and concerts are starting to come back slowly but surely. Most significantly though, sports, at all levels, are back into full swing.
Not only is this great to see at the professional levels, but it is even better to see at the lower little league and high school levels.
One of the teams looking to capitalize on this first full season since 2019 is Henderson, Colorado’s Prairie View High School Football team.
In 2019 Prairie View had a great year. They posted a 7-3 record, winning four of their five home games and only giving up an astonishing 84 points on defense the entire 10 game season – that is about 8.4 points per game – about only a single touchdown per game. To put that into perspective, other teams in their league averaged around 200 points given up on defense, or about 20 points per game which is roughly three touchdowns per game.
Despite these quite gaudy stats from the 2019 Thunderhawks, they would narrowly miss the 2019 5A playoffs, even though they placed second in the 5A Metro 1 division.
Prairie View was poised for the 2020 season to make another run at the 5A playoffs, but then COVID-19 swept through the country.
Besides COVID, Prairie View also lost their head coach from the previous year, Ben Startzer. This was another heavy hand dealt to the Thundhawks, which did not turn the tables well for the 2020 season.
Under their new head coach, Tim Cardenas, the Thunderhawks would go a disappointing 0-5 during the abbreviated 2020 season. They gave up 165 points on defense the entire season, almost double as many as the 2019 season in only half of the number of games. Additionally only scoring 12 points on offense the whole five-game season.
This was not an accurate representation of the Thunderhawks, though; coming out of a funky and abbreviated COVID season while also learning an entirely new offense and defense under an entirely new head coach. The sample size from the 2020 season had so many different caveats and outside factors affecting the team that it would not be fair to judge the team and new head coach solely off of that season.
That is why the pressure, expectations, and excitement are all high at Prairie View right now. The 2021 season brings hope for many teams that were thrown off of their game in 2020, such as Prairie View.
For Prairie View, the 2021 season kicked off on Friday, August 27th, against their long-time cross-town rival, Brighton High School. Unfortunately, they did end up losing the game 34-6. However, despite this loss, expectations for Prairie View will continue to be high, and the Mountain that the Thunderhawks will have to climb will continue to be high.
The Thunderhawks (38th in the State for 5A) 2021 season is a tough one, to say the least; with the likes of Fairview (12th in the State for 5A), Far Northeast (20th in the State for 5A), Denver East (23rd in the State for 5A), and Rangeview (26th in the State for 5A).
It will be very interesting to see how the 2021 football season will play out for teams all over the country, but especially for the Prairie View Thunderhawks.
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