The Raiders Football Team suffered an excruciating second half by losing 45-16 to the Santa Ana College Dons on Sept.15.

The Raiders endured six penalty calls in the second half and only scored six points in the last two quarters.

Athletic Director, Howard Davis talked about the struggles that the Raiders faced in the second half.

“Saturday’s game was clearly not our team’s best effort,” said Davis. “In athletics, teams simply have bad days where nothing seems to go right. Our game against Santa Ana College would qualify as that for us. After a solid first half, we just were out of sync for whatever reason.”

The Raiders started off on a good start when Derek Kirk kicked a 38 yard field goal and Ronny Camacho enticed the crowd with a 67 yard touchdown run that gave the Raiders an early lead of 10-6. But Santa Ana ended up running away with the game after they took a 15-10 lead at halftime. After halftime that is when the Raiders started to get a lot of penalty calls that affected their drive to get back in the game.

Head Coach of the Football Team, Will Thurston, talked about how penalties affected their game.

“The game was going to be close but at the turnout we had way too many penalties,” said Thurston.

After half time the only points that the Raiders got were from field goals. Both field goals were kicked by Derek Kirk who attempted them at 35 and 23 yards. While the Raiders couldn’t score a lot in the second half, the Don’s got 16 points in the third quarter and 14 in the fourth quarter.

Ryan Camacho, running back for the Raiders, talked about what his team needs to do next in order to win the next game.

“We are probably going to try to work on our play calling, staying discipline, conditioning, and not letting being down in the game affect us and just not giving up, just finishing strong and overall having a better game this week,” said Camacho.

The Raiders are now 1-2 for the season and will be facing the Allan Hancock Bulldogs, Saturday, Sept. 22 in Santa Maria at 4 p.m.