On a wet and cold Friday night, the Ranger football team showed up to play its toughest game yet; this game was more than a game, it was a show. In week eleven, the Rangers hosted Mona Shores in the MHSAA district championship game. 

“This win feels good,” senior captain Raymond Cargill said. “The team definitely came together to win this one and everyone fought very hard for this win. Obviously, we have had a rough couple of years against them but this is a new team and a new year and our goal is to keep on winning.”

The Mona Shores-FHC rivalry goes a lot deeper than many fans assume. In the past six years, the two teams have met up five times, and going into Friday’s game, Mona Shores was ruling the series 3-1 with the team’s only loss against FHC in 2017. With all meetings at home, the Rangers were playing this game with the intention of taking advantage of being on their own turf. 

The first half of the game is the most important to set the tone, but considering both teams’ tradition of setting the standard early, they seemed to struggle to get up to pace. The first quarter started slow for the Rangers with no scoring. Although they tried to pull ahead early with the knowledge of Mona being a first-half team, they were able to limit Mona’s scoring to 7-0 at the end of the first. This would only be the beginning of the heated game to come. In the second quarter, both teams scored to stay neck-in-neck with each other until halftime chimed in. The score would be 14-7 with Mona Shores in the lead going into the second half. 

Unlike the first half, the second half brought the heat on both sides in what was one of the strongest showings in history. The third quarter is where the game heated up, and no matter how hard Mona Shores tried, their first-half lead could not save them in the second. The Rangers pulled ahead in the third with a score of 26-14 that would only grow as the minutes on the clock ticked down. The fourth quarter not only brought chills to every fan in the crowd but also brought the end of a long tradition of Mona victories. FHC and Mona would go back and forth down to the last second when the fight was over and the Rangers came out with the win 33-21. 

“I think we have a lot of confidence going into next week, our performance against Mona really showed us what we are capable of,” senior Sam Sneider said.

This win means more than just a district championship under the Ranger’s belt; this win means the team is still undefeated going 11-0 and means they will now play East Lansing at home next week to compete for a place in the state semifinals. The team will meet up against East Lansing at FHC on Friday, November 11, at 7 p.m.

“We are just so happy to finally get over the hump of beating Mona shores, it not only means a lot to us but to all the past FHC teams who played Mona; we won for them as well,” senior Crandall Quinn said.