Football, 2-4, will be going on the road to face the Hamilton Yankees, 2-4, after a 18-6 victory against the Westchester Comets in their first league game of the season.

Head coach Angelo Gasca said that the games early kickoff time is something the gondoliers are not used to. After 8 years of losing to Venice, the Yankees’ thirst for victory “makes them a dangerous team.”

“We have to find a way to succeed regardless of the setting,” he said.

The Gondoliers need to care more about themselves rather than how good their opponents are.

“We worry about Venice High School and Venice High School’s football players,” he said.
“It’s never really about the opponent. It’s just getting Venice to play the right way, and getting our players to do the right thing on and off the field that usually leads to success for us.”

Approaching the game against Hamilton this afternoon, Gasca explained his three-part strategy.
1) Win the kicking game.

(“We have a weapon in our punter and in our kicker, Sophomore London Webster and Senior Amir Smith are two of the top guys doing what they’re doing in our league,” Gasca said.)
2) Win the turnover battle. 

3) Keep the other team out of the endzone and limit the amount of chunk plays (“In other words, if somebody’s going to score on us, they have to drive it in on us, which requires a lot more effort and efficiency than somebody catching the ball or getting handed the battle and running 60 or 70 yards,” Gasca said.)
If the team does all three of these things, they’re “probably going to win most of the time,” Gasca said. 

“And that’s true at every level of football—I didn’t invent that,” he said.