Trojan Field hosted the annual Battle of the Boot football game against City High. It was a busy night for the Trojans as they honored the senior football and cheer members.

The Little Hawks challenged the Trojans early in the game by scoring the first touchdown in the first quarter. The Trojans fought back with two touchdowns from Jalen Gaudet ’19 and Jason Strunk ’19 to end the first quarter 15-7. Marcus Morgan ’21, Peter Breitbach ’19, Owen McAreavy ‘19 and Noah Aanestad ‘19 all added touchdowns to West’s score during the second quarter. Josh Jasek ’19 also contributed a field goal. The Trojans went into the second half leading 47-7. During halftime, twirler Lizzy Slade ’21 performed with fire batons to get the student section excited for the second half of the game.

“I was not [afraid of the fire]; a lot of people think that twirling fire is super scary because of the [added] element of fire. But the worst that could happen is you catch [the baton] on the end and burn your hand, which does hurt, but it heals as well and we eventually learn to catch it in the middle,” Slade said.

Joey Kuehn ’19 and City High added touchdowns to their scores during the fourth quarter. West defeated the Little Hawks 54-13 and kept the traveling boot trophy for the second year in a row.

“It’s always awesome to beat a crosstown rival and hold up that trophy. It’s great that we get to keep it on this side of town for another year,” Gaudet said.

West will host Cedar Rapids Kennedy next Friday for the first round of playoffs.

Gallery • 10 Photos

Kara Wagenknecht

The West High student section partakes in the annual flour throw after kickoff against City High on Oct. 19, 2018. West went on to defeat the Little Hawks 54-13 in the 50th crosstown rival game. “The tradition is to throw [flour] at our rivalry game against City High. We followed tradition with the flour and also with our camouflage out. I bought [seven] bags of flour as well as a pack of 100 baggies,” said student section leader Zac Moore ’19. “The day of the game I bagged all the bags … and brought them all to the student section. Just before the varsity game started I walked through all the students [and handed] out bags and [explained] that we are throwing it at kickoff and to share the flour. After all [the] bags were passed out it was go time and flour was everywhere.”

West v. City battle of the boot.