Throughout high school sports, every school has rivalry games, games that mean a little more than just a win or a loss. It’s a game where a team’s pride is on the line. At Dougherty Valley, these games often determine playoff seeding, a team’s overall success and even school pride.
At Dougherty Valley, the girls flag football team has quickly built their own identity around the East Bay. As one of the school’s newest and fastest growing sports teams, the players have embraced the competition and have started to build rivalries of their own, especially after their upset win against Cal High earlier this season.
“It’s just kind’ve a different mentality going into the game, you want to win a lot more, we definitely feel when a rivalry is coming up because the entire team tries harder,” junior flag football captain Kaitlyn Lohe said.
Lohe emphasized on how rivalry games bring a different feeling out of the team to practice harder. Rivalry games push athletes to play at their highest level, bringing the team closer together before a big game. These games define a team’s season, not only bringing the team together, but also adding pressure and motivation that regular games just don’t have. Lohe also talked about how she believes from her perception as an athlete, a school doesn’t have just one rival school.
“A rival school is whoever you want to beat the most, it’s whoever you feel the most passionate about winning against,” Lohe said.
Lohe added that for the flag football team, California High School appears to be their main rival, despite historically, Dublin High School being DV’s main rival. She went on to talk about how her relationships with players on Cal High makes those games seem more meaningful. Lohe called Dougherty’s win against Cal High earlier this year as the highlight of her season, due to proving many wrong and upsetting a neighboring high school.
DV’s flag football team has recently stood out compared to many of Dougherty’s other athletic teams. One athletic team, specifically football, has struggled in the past to establish a true rival. Dougherty Valley is surrounded by many of the best football programs in the Bay Area, like California High School and San Ramon Valley High School. Due to this, DVHS hasn’t found a true rival due to the constant uphill battle to keep up with these programs. For many years, students have considered Dublin to be Dougherty’s rival in many sports including football due to their proximity. Yet in football, that rivalry faded with DVHS not winning a single matchup against Dublin in the past seven years. Dougherty Valley has now shifted their mindset towards developing their program, so that they can be competing against their neighboring high schools once again, and build the competitive drive for intense matchups that establish rivalries.
“We plan on putting our program right beside all the other programs here in San Ramon,” football head coach Gwangee Pittman said.
Pittman talked about how Dougherty Valley is the only program in San Ramon who hasn’t figured out football yet, which factors into the rivalries we have. A major factor into creating rivalries at Dougherty Valley isn’t just the relationships between players, but it’s the competitiveness between the schools as well. Both Lohe and Pittman emphasized the value of competitive games. If there’s no competitiveness in the games, the students will stop showing up to a blowout, and the players will lose the extra edge and passion they feel whenever a game is coming up.
