Saugus Football Focuses on Injury Prevention and Strength for Upcoming Foothill League Season
By Tim Haddock and Sage Rafferty
The Saugus High football team, after a winless season, is focusing on injury prevention and building strength to prepare for a comeback in the competitive Foothill League. With experienced returners like Ty Hall and Rylan Connelly, Coach Jason Bornn is hopeful that the team’s off-season efforts will lead to success this year.
August 11, 2024 - After a challenging 0-10 season, the Saugus High football team is determined to make a strong comeback. With a roster full of experienced returners, including running back Ty Hall and linebacker Rylan Connelly, the team is focused on building strength and staying injury-free as they prepare for the upcoming season. Coach Jason Bornn believes that the hard work put in during the off-season and the veteran presence on the team could translate into success in the highly competitive Foothill League.
One of the returners is running back Ty Hall. He says he is recovering from knee surgery that occurred a couple years ago. It limited him in his sophomore season, but Hall said he feels better and stronger heading into this season. He talked about what he wants to accomplish and what he wants the Saugus team to accomplish this season.
“I’ve been working on putting on weight and increasing my strength,” Ty Hall told Santa Clarita Weekly’s Tim Haddock. “And rehabilitating my knee, because I had knee surgery two years ago, but it still hurts sometimes. And the team as a whole, we’re working on injury prevention. That’s a big thing for us this year because last year injuries took us down quite a bit.”
Another returning player is linebacker Rylan Connelly. He is one of the few seniors on the team and leads a veteran defensive unit. He talked to Santa Clarita Weekly about what he brings to the team as one of the senior leaders.
“We’ve really been pushing it this summer,” Rylan Connelly said. “We practice pretty much every day. We’ve been hitting the weight room hard. We’ve been focusing on the weight room definitely this off-season… We have a saying: ‘Build the armor, sharpen the sword.’ And that’s what we do here in the weight room is build that armor to have us go a long distance in the season.”
Connelly told Santa Clarita Weekly that it’s up to him to motivate the team. “One thing I need to work on is just motivating the team a little bit more,” Connelly said. “Being a senior, we have a small number of us, but we just need to be loud and pump up these guys, because we’re going to do something good.”
Saugus High School football coach Jason Bornn said the Foothill League is always tough. His team went 0-10 last season and finished in last place in the Foothill League. Bornn told Santa Clarita Weekly that there will be a clean slate for his team heading into this season. The Foothill League will be competitive again, and he said that he won’t know how his team matches up until the games start. He is prepared for another tough season, but he has confidence in his players to meet the challenge.
When Tim Haddock asked Coach Bornn what his team is doing to prepare for the upcoming season, he replied, “So basically just strength, conditioning, just developing their bodies for the rigors that football demands of them. So that’s where our focus has primarily been as well as teaching the basic fundamentals of what we do.”
Bornn told Santa Clarita Weekly that his team is prepared for another season of playing in the notoriously tough Foothill League.
“I think every year, you don’t really know who’s going to rise to the top in terms of the League standings until the games are being played. So every year is a clean slate, but there’s no doubt about it that his League is one of the most challenging and competitive leagues in the southern section. We have seven teams in it, and nobody’s a walk in the park. Every week is going to be like a playoff game for us.”
“I just want them to meet their potential,” Coach Bornn said when asked what his goals for the team are. “We preach to them to be the best version of themselves each and every day. That’s all I can really ask of them. If they are achieving that, the wins and losses take care of themselves.”
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