For the first time since 2019 the Sedona Red Rock High School varsity football team took the field during its pre-season scrimmage on Friday, Aug. 15 at home against the Joseph City Wildcats.

“The kid gloves have come off now,” Head Coach Tony Hauserman said to the players on the Monday, Aug. 18, closing moments of practice. “We got to get tougher so that means we stay focused. We have to try harder.”

I’m “just unbelievably excited to have football back here in Sedona, Friday Night Lights,” SOCSD Superintendent Tom Swaninger, Ph.D., said from the sidelines cheering on the Scorpions. “We’ve got [a] good crowd in the stands … I think it’s great for our student athletes, for students and for our community. It’s tough to have a real legitimate high school without football. We’ve got that now.”

“There isn’t one person on the team that’s ever tackled or blocked before,” assistant coach John Bradshaw said. “It’s going to be a challenge. In the scrimmage, you could see from start to finish that kids were [initially] timid and not willing to hit … but by the end they were leaning into it, hitting and tackling. It will take getting out there and doing it. Probably two or three games to get it dialed … but then we should see this team come alive.”

New for the Scorpions and coaching staff is playing in the 1A division from 2A meaning that they will now be playing eight-man football, after winning their reclassification appeal from the governing body earlier this year.

“When we first started tackling with pads, I got hit pretty hard and really felt it since I’d never played tackle before,” junior linebacker Gerardo Cruz said. “I decided to try the sport because I have friends on the team and wanted to see what it was all about. Once I hit someone for the first time, I thought it was fun and kept going. It was good to have contact with other players we didn’t know, as it gave us a taste of the game.”

The scrimmage also served as a “welcome to football” experience for the team made up of student athletes who have gone their entire lives without making contact since the only feeder program is flag football.

“I think it was the third play of the game, I was running down the middle and just got completely folded by a guy, and that kind of woke me up. … It kind of helped me realize what this season is going to be like, and showed me what it would feel like,” junior running back Keldon Cain said, pointing to some turf burns he got on his arm and leg during the scrimmage describing them as “little trophies.”

“Football, I always wanted to play, and my dad played for four years and he loved it. So I joined because I wanted to try it out, too,” senior Running back Steel Sturgeon said and added his big lesson from the scrimmage was “no matter how big I am, I can’t run over four people.”

Unfortunately, sophomore Miguel Villelagas who plays center was injured with a knee hyperextension during the scrimmage and is out indefinitely pending an MRI.

“Oh yeah, I’d definitely still be on the field if I could for the season opener; I want to be there with my teammates and help them out,” Villelagas said. He added his goal for the season is to “protect my quarterback from getting sacked.”

“There was one play that looked like it was straight out of the ‘Blind Side’ the movie [Villelagas] stood up this guy and just drove him 30 yards down the field, and didn’t stop until the whistle blew,” Hauserman said. “It was just a thing of beauty, and this kid’s a sophomore.”

Leading the offensive team is senior quarterback Vincent Smith, who plans to enroll at Northern Arizona University next fall to study business in addition to playing the violin.

“[Music] prepares you to keep your composure and have patience, because violin is a time-consuming, patient hobby to have,” Smith said. “As for quarterback, it’s a fast-paced, rough position, and you have to stay on top of everyone and make sure they’re doing their job.

“We met when I was in sixth grade and we’ve been friends since then,” Villelagas said about Smith. “We also run track together and all that, so we have a pretty good relationship.”

While the teams weren’t allowed to keep score during the scrimmage because of Arizona Interscholastic Association rules Smith said he still considers that first outing a victory.

“The first play, I bobbled the snap and took it straight up the middle [and] I got tackled, but it wasn’t too hard,” Smith said. “Then another time I pitched the ball and got laid out. That was my ‘welcome to football’ moment. But it’s nice to finally have contact. You learn ways to get around that contact, get through it. And it’s almost a bonding experience with everybody, too. You have to have trust in everyone.”

“The kids that we have are fantastic, I don’t think I’ve ever been around a group of players that I’ve enjoyed more than this group, but we don’t have enough of them,” Hauserman said, however he noted that he is still onboarding another four or five players he hopes to add to his ranks. He also placed the odds at “about 90%” that the team will still complete its season outside of the possibility of having to forfeit a couple of games.

Swaninger said that he will probably have a roster of 20 players for the Friday, Sept. 22 opener and “ideally” the program will also have a junior varsity in the future however there is no timeline for that as they will build the program.

“It gave me the chills … when the players took the field [for the scrimmage] I looked up into the stands and our stands were about half filled with students holding signs and support of their classmates, we had parent, we had numerous community members that I talked with that didn’t have kids that were playing in that scrimmage, but they wanted to come out and just participate in what was happening that night,” Swaninger said “That’s the type of thing that football can bring this community and if we can do that just for a scrimmage, I’m excited to see what we can do.”

The Scorpions’ 2025 home football games are scheduled for Friday, Aug. 29, Friday, Sept. 19, Friday, Sept. 26 and Friday, Oct. 10.

The Scorpions first home game is Friday, Aug. 29 at 7 p.m. at SRRHS at 995 Upper Red Rock Loop Rd. For more information visit scorpionboosterclub.com.