Broncos hoping to end on a high note

The Alvirne High School football team isn’t playing for a postseason spot, but that doesn’t mean Friday night’s contest against Manchester West isn’t a big game for the Broncos.

After losing their first six games, including five in Division II play, the Broncos have a chance to finish the season by winning three of four, if Alvirne can beat West. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. in Hudson.

“For us, it’s a big football game,” Alvirne coach Bobby Nimblett said. “We’ve been talking all week about ending with (winning) three of four and what we did toward the end of the season, and have it carry us into next year.”

Seeing how his team has played the last month, especially on defense, has made Nimblett wonder how different might the season have been if Alvirne had been able to start the season a little stronger.

“We were an inexperienced football team and if we could have gotten one early, we could have felt good about getting those wins and we could have battled better,” he said. “We’re a young football program in general. I’ve been here seven years and it’s still a young program. We haven’t learned yet when things start going bad to turn it around and stay positive. Some of the kids haven’t learned, it’s OK to make a mistake, just go out and play the next play.”

Early in the season the Broncos were playing teams close in the first half only to have something go wrong after halftime, and a close game too many times turned into a deficit of multiple scores.

That happened to Alvirne again last week against Bishop Guertin. The Broncos actually had a 7-6 lead at halftime before falling 39-7.

“Offensively, we sputtered against BG, but I think that might have been more of a product of it being BG,” Nimblett said. “We really battled, especially defensively. I think our defense has really come around, the last two weeks especially. A lot of the stuff in the second half was created by the offense. We didn’t move the ball well. We had turnovers and we put our defense in tough positions.”

Both Alvirne (1-6 in Division II, 2-7 overall) and West (1-6, 1-8) will be looking for their second division win this week, and both teams got their only division win over Spaulding.

Although it’s the final game of the year with little meaning to the rest of the division, Nimblett wants his Broncos going out to compete like every other game.

“We’re going go after it like we’d go after any football game,” he said. “If it works out that we can get more guys in, but we’re going to treat it like any other game. Everybody has had a chance this year to play football games. Everyone has had their shot. There was a lot of trial and error this year.”