The McCallum Knights routed the Lehman Lobos, 35-10 on Sept. 1 at House Park.
Rushing 34 times for 140 yards, senior Andre Blakemore backed up his recognition as week one’s CostCutters Player of the Week by scoring four of his team’s five touchdowns in week two. Junior Max Perez added 83 yards rushing and 70 yards passing, including a 26-yard TD pass to senior Day’lon Byrd that started the Knights’ scoring barrage. Blakemore scored twice in the second quarter, once in the third quarter and once in the fourth. After leading 21-0, the Knights led Lobos at half, 21-10. Except for the short lapse in the second quarter, the defense stifled the Lobos all night, creating four turnovers and holding the team without a first down until the second quarter.
In his post-game comments, head coach Charles Taylor stressed the defensive effort as the key to his team’s victory.
“Our defense played great,” Taylor told a trio of reporters who interviewed him after the game. “They’re piggy-backing off how they played last year. Overall it’s a win, but we still have work to do.”
Defensive end Ronald Dotson agreed that the team’s success depends on everyone putting in the work every day.
“We work real hard in practice,” Dotson said. “We come out every day. I want to give a shout out to everyone on the defense from the D-lineman all the way back to the DB’s to the backups.”
Linebacker Jack Switzer also stressed that the defensive effort was due to everyone doing their part.
“We play as a unit and that’s what happens, you know? We completely shut them out in the second half,” Switzer said. “We just kept getting three and outs, we’d get tackles behind the line, and we forced a lot of turnovers,” Switzer said.
Dotson said that the team now sets its sights on Seguin, its next opponent, in hopes that this team will continue its winning ways on a path that ends with a special season in McCallum’s long football tradition.
— with reporting by Joseph Cardenas and Mia Orrick
Defensive end Ronald Dotson. Interview by Joseph Cardenas. Video by Mia Orrick.
Linebacker Jack Switzer. Interview by Joseph Cardenas. Video by Mia Orrick.
Photos by Charlie Holden, Adrian Pena, and Dave Winter.
![A PRIDE-FUL WEEK OF CELEBRATION:
As part of AISDs week-long celebration of PRIDE, students of the McCallum Spectrum Club worked to create a week full of activities, prizes and helping hands to support the schools LGBTQ+ community. The club is widely available for anyone to join, and specializes in creating a safe space for students to share and give advice. While Pride month itself isn’t until June, AISD designates one week in March to celebrate and commemorate the importance of this part of the student body.
As part of the week of festivities, the club held a booth in the front hall handing out pride stickers, pins and merch to passers by. For junior Zane Joly, the booth idea was brought up as a way for students to engage with one another, and connect with the community.
“I call out to people in the halls, ‘hey, do you want stickers?’” Joly said. “We just give out free pride stickers and sometimes other free pride merch to the students of Macallum because everybody likes pride stickers.”
While the week itself is packed with a variety of different activities, the overall goal is to bring students closer together and create a safer environment for self expression at McCallum.
“The idea for the student panel largely came from the black [history] student panel that is done during Black History Month,” Joly said. “And the idea for giving out free stuff was developed at Spectrum last year.”
Joly is not only a member of the Spectrum club, but also holds a leadership position giving them a more hands-on role with the projects and Pride Week activities.
“McCallum has a very high queer population,” Joly said. “I think Its nice that we get a chance to celebrate Pride because Pride Month is during the summer, and I think its just a nice thing for the community and getting to just celebrate it.”
While the merch table at lunch was only a small part of the numerous parts of McCallum’s Pride week, for Joly this small impact made all the difference.
“The purpose of Pride is to make people not feel alone and to make them feel safe,” Joly said. “The goal is [to make people] happy about a part of themselves that theyre often conditioned to not feel good about.”
Caption by Chloe Lewcock. Photo by Shila Gill.](https://macshieldonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/53597258192_6e7168d8ae_o-1-1200x676.jpg)
