By Ryder Bradley

On Collegiate’s Homecoming Day, Saturday, November 4, there was high energy leading up to the one of the most significant rivalries in Virginia, between the Collegiate Cougars and the St. Christopher’s Saints varsity football teams. 

The Cougars headed into Saturday’s match up with a record of four wins and five losses, while the Saints had a record of four wins and four losses. The Cougars were coming off of a strong victory at Norfolk Academy the week before, beating the Bulldogs 38-7. The Saints were coming off a bye week after previously losing a close game against the Trinity Titans (28-24). 

Before the game, when I asked Saints sophomore linebacker Walker Turley how the bye week helped the Saints prepare for their matchup against the Cougars, he said, “It has been good to have extra time to prepare for a big rivalry game, with me being somewhat new to St. Chris. I’ve never experienced this rivalry, and I’m excited to be a part of it. The bye week allowed us to take things slow this past week, so we can fly around in practice and know what to do. I also think it made our blood boil. The past few weeks have been rough. We lost to both Trinity Episcopal School and Woodberry Forest Tigers by one score each. Having last week off made us hungry to play against the Cougars.” 

When I asked Cougars cornerback Charlie Miller (‘24) how he felt going into Saturday’s highly anticipated matchup, he said, “I feel like this is one our biggest games of the year, especially because it’s our rival which makes it a pretty big deal. The atmosphere that will be at the game will be something like we haven’t experienced before. I feel like our coaches prepared us to their best of their ability in order to dominate.” 

The environment for Saturday’s game day was special. There were plenty of food trucks, along with great music to fit the Homecoming atmosphere. There were many members of the Collegiate community—students, alumni, and families—scattered around the field, and the Senior tailgate took place in the Business Office parking lot. Overall, there was plenty of energy coming from the green and gold side.

Cougar varsity football captains. Photo credit: @balloutvizuals on instagram. 

The energy carried into the rivalry match up with the Cougars fighting together, but the unfortunate loss to the saints (14-7), caused the Cougars to be just shy of the VISAA Playoffs. Despite the loss, the Cougar football family fought all 48 minutes together with smiles on their faces. 

When I asked teammate Adam Sulanke (‘25) about how the season went, Sulanke expressed, “Our season did not turn out the way we wanted it to. Coming into the season we had high hopes and a lot of confidence in ourselves, and we did not finish the way we hoped to. I think we worked hard, and we were very close to being a great team.”

Next year, the Cougars hope to improve the program in a variety of different ways. Ben Heidt (‘25) said, “I personally think next year is going to be a lot better than this year. We are doing rigorous off-season sports performance workouts, trying to gain 20 pounds of muscle, while becoming bigger, faster, and stronger. I personally think you really benefit from the program, and it will help us out tremendously next year and the years to come.”