The Peninsula Athletic League will be in the Thursday Night Football spotlight as three of the four games being played tonight are between PAL teams. In the Bay Division, Burlingame will be at Aragon; Sequoia will host Los Altos in an El Camino Division opener; and in the Lake Division, Mills hosts Lynbrook.
Make no mistake: no high school coach likes to play on Thursday. They understand it is necessary because of the lack of high school football officials and they accept it, but no one likes it.
That being said, there are some teams in better position than others when it comes to a short week. In the case of Burlingame-Aragon and Los Altos-Sequoia, all four are coming off bye weeks, making the shortened week much more manageable.
Mills and Lynbrook, on the other hand, played last week — Mills picked up its first win of the season, 30-28 over Saratoga, while Lynbrook lost 34-20 to El Camino.
Those teams will feel the effects of just three days of practice.
“It means one less day of rest, one less day of prep. It puts an added layer of pressure,” said Rick Angelini, Mills’ first-year head coach. “Twenty-four hours represents 25% of your availability to practice. The value of that one lost day is more than just one day.”
Knowing that his team would be playing Lynbrook on a short week, Angelini said he and his three-member coaching staff started looking at Lynbrook film in the days leading up to Mills’ game against Saratoga.
And then on Saturday, instead of breakfast and film, Angelini turned Saturday into Monday: one that saw his team watching film and then going through a practice that would normally occur after the weekend.
“We started looking at Lynbrook film on Thursday (before the Saratoga game). We don’t want to look too far ahead and we weren’t telling the players. This was back of mind for the coaches,” Angelini said. “[The short week] means we have to squeeze the same amount of information in a shorter amount of time. Every week, we stress the fact we need to maximize every second (of practice) we have. With less time, we need to focus more.”
Aragon, Burlingame, Los Altos and Sequoia, however, had a much easier time preparing for Thursday’s games, getting 11 days between games.
In the case of the Dons and Panthers, specifically, they are already very familiar with each other. Aragon head coach Steve Sell and his Burlingame counterpart John Philipopoulos both have more than 20 seasons under their belts with their respective teams and face each other regularly.
There is not a lot of secrets the teams have from each other.
“We’ve already played a couple of wing-T teams (this season),” said Sell, referencing the offense the Panthers run. “So that makes [preparation] a little easier.”
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Unlike Angelini and Mills, Burlingame’s Philipopoulos didn’t have to try and cram four days of practice into three. Instead, both Burlingame and Aragon had the luxury of extending prep time.
“Over the bye, Monday was like a Saturday,” Philipopoulos said, adding he moved film study, stretching and weightlifting from the weekend to the start of the week.
On Thursday, Sept. 15, “we introduced the game plan for Aragon,” Philipopoulos said.
That gives the Panthers six days to prepare for the Dons. But that also means Aragon has had a week to prep for the Panthers, as well, while also giving the coaching staff time to work on deficiencies.
“Getting your house in order and getting stuff corrected is important during the week,” Sell said. “Monday and Tuesday (of last week) were like bonus days. We didn’t even talk about Burlingame until last Thursday.”
Not only did the bye week allow teams to get healthy physically, it also gave Burlingame a chance to take a deep breath. The Panthers have lost two in a row, including a disappointing 22-19 loss to Homestead two weeks ago. Philipopoulos said the week off allowed his team to get right mentally as well.
“It was kind of good to reset a little bit. We lost a heartbreaker (two weeks ago),” Philipopoulos said. “ But we bounce back pretty well. Our kids are resilient.”
Going forward, coaches and their staffs will have to rewrite their practice schedules to accommodate for Thursday night games. Almost all the teams in the PAL will play Thursday night games at some point this season. Philipopoulos said his team has another Thursday game in October.
“We all better get used to it. It’s going to be happening more and more,” Sell said. “Just like, it must have been weird to play football in the spring (during the pandemic 2020 season being played in the spring of 2021). But when the game starts, the game starts.”
Week 5 football previews Thursday
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