Alvirne heads to Dover looking for first win

A long road trip on a Saturday may just be what the Alvirne High School football team needs.

It’s a chance for the Broncos to get away from Hudson and a chance to mix up their routine. For the last three weeks, things have looked too familiar for Alvirne, and not in a good way.

In last week’s 35-7 loss to Timberlane, the Broncos trailed 13-7 at halftime for the second week in a row, and for the third week, they played a competitive first half.

And then the second half started.

“I don’t know if we’re so excited in the first half that we wear ourselves down and by the time we get to the second half, we come out a little bit flat,” Alvirne coach Bobby Nimblett said. “We don’t necessarily know how to take the excitement through half time and bring it out.

“Even at the end of the first half, we scored, got the ball back and had a chance to score again. We had the momentum with us, and we needed to take that into halftime, especially since we were going to get the ball (to start the second half).”

That lack of excitement might have led the Broncos to make mistakes in the second half, and most of those came on defense.

“The main thing was we didn’t tackle well,” Nimblett said. “Against a good, aggressive team, we didn’t tackle well. If we could have tackled, we would have had opportunities to keep things close. There were a bunch of times we had them in third-and-5 or third-and-6 and we just couldn’t close it out and get the defense off the field. That goes back to tackling.”

Since the Broncos have been able to put together good first halves, Nimblett is hopefully it’s just a matter of time before Alvirne gets a complete game together.

“We’re playing good first-half football,” he said. “At home, we’re getting off to slow starts, but on the road we’re playing good. It’s now a matter of can we play three quarters. Or can we play two halves. I’d like to jump over the three quarters and go right to two halves.”

The Broncos will face a team this week that’s had a bit of bad luck of its own in Dover. The teams are scheduled to kickoff Saturday at Dover.

The Green Wave are just 1-3 overall on the season, but those three losses are by a combined 11 points. Dover got its first win of the year last week, beating Spaulding 34-0.

“It’s another tough game for us on the road at Dover,” Nimblett said. “We knew they had a good offensive line and defensive line coming back. They did a really nice job filling in their skill positions.

“Offensively, they’re in the shotgun and spreading receivers all over the place. You have to be disciplined. Defensively, they have an attacking defense, too. They’re definitely a dangerous football team and we have to go face them on a Saturday afternoon for their homecoming. Hopefully our young football team can stay focused with all that going on.”