“Our schedule is a two-year rotation and with football, your first nine games are Conference and District, Week 10 is undecided,” head football coach Mike Genge said. “…Obviously with it being an odd number, some years you’re going to have five home games, some years you’re going to have four. This just happens to be our four year.”

During the two seasons with five home games, the team was able to play the 10th week at home, giving OHS six home games. Last year, the team had four home games with week 10 being played at home, awarding the school a fifth home game. The news of only four home games went unnoticed last year.

“I think everybody gets spoiled, you know,” Genge said. “When you have those six… and then all of a sudden you kind of come back to reality of, ‘oh shoot, you only do have four.’” 

Genge sees that with the decreased amount of home games that the team has as an opportunity. He and the team feel more locked in thanks to having less downtime compared to home games where they have until 7 p.m. until the game.

“There’s a lot of dead time to fill. When you’re on the road, you have that travel time,” Genge said. “The dead time is a lot less, so it depends on where you’re headed.”

“I prefer home games for sure because I get more time to prepare myself,” Jonathan Ysaguirre (12) said, “and with the home crowd, it’s just a lot more fun.”

Students last year seemed to notice at the end of the season how little home games they truly had out of the season as a whole, and Genge said students have begun traveling with the football team, showing up to away games besides those hosted at Mehlville High School.

“It (students traveling to games) kind of started towards the end of last year, but we have a pretty good fan base now,” Genge said.

Distance also plays a role in how many students go to away games.

“It (how many students are at away games) kind of depends on who we’re playing for the week,” Ysaguirre said. “A bigger game, like when we played Lingbergh, a lot more people came out.”

Genge said fans traveling to more away games is energizing for the players and coaches since the crowd is there cheering them on from the sidelines.

“When you’re winning and things are going good, that noise, that energy, you feed off of it,” Genge said. “Likewise when things are going bad, it’s that eerie silence, you know, like oh my gosh, you know it’s just that energy and you can feel it.”