Three games into the regular season, the Palo Alto High School football team (1-2-0) have struggled to build off of a strong season opener, dropping their last two games to Archbishop Mitty (3-0-0) and Palma High School (1-3-0).

After a disappointing 20-23 loss to the Chieftains last Friday, the Vikings look to get back on track against Fremont High School (0-3-0) this Friday on the road.

Senior running back Romaine Ward discussed the team’s struggles in the first two games.

“In the Mitty game we had a lot of small mistakes,” Ward said. “Against Palma, as a team we lagged in the first half and they made two field goals in the second half. We stepped it up, got close, but fell short by 3 points.”

Going into the game against Fremont, Ward stated that it was imperative to improve as a team during practice, which the Vikings have this past week.

“As a team we worked on improving our tackling, run game, pass protection and getting our defense as well as our defensive line stronger,” Ward said. “we just have to lock in, get focused, work hard in practice as a team and execute our assignments.”

One trend consistent in both Viking losses was a slow start. On the defensive side, the Vikings allowed a total of 44 points in the first halves against Mitty and Palma, while only putting up 20 combined points on the offensive end, according to Maxpreps.com.

Senior running back Marcus Brown noted that getting off to strong starts is definitely something they have worked on, and is something they have emphasized for tonight’s game against Fremont. However, he isn’t worried that they will fail to execute tonight.

“We’ve struggled with that [strong starts] for sure,” Brown said. “But we’ve been working in practice all week, and I think we should be fine for this Friday.”

The game will start at 7:00 p.m. tonight at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale.