Every August, as the vacations come to an end, and the bustle of school starts again, members of 15,810 different high school football programs suit up for what is to be an intense, grueling season. Each team is a unique combination of young men with their own stories and abilities, united by their movement toward a common goal: victory. We all know our roster, filled with familiar faces dressed in iconic black-and-gold, but what exactly makes “Archbishop Mitty Football” different?

Well, It all stems from the process.

Following a devastating loss at Valley Christian, Archbishop Mitty began its week at 3-1 with something to prove to WCAL powerhouse Saint Francis. The Monarchs entered this matchup as heavy underdogs, with few people outside the confines of our tree-lined campus believing the matchup would be a close one at all. To add weight to an already great burden, an intense heat wave had struck the Bay Area, preventing the team from training to their fullest abilities all week. The odds were stacked a mile high against those who donned the black and gold. But, as Head Coach Daniel Sullivan frequently points out, “We have to do things the hard way. There are no shortcuts.”

So, after a hard week of practice, the Monarchs took the field against Saint Francis two weeks ago for the annual “Friday Night Lights” game. The Monarchs started the game off strong, with touchdowns from WR Marquis Marshall (‘26) and RB Lazaro Faraj-Washington (‘26) leading them to take a 14-9 lead by halftime.

However, the Lancers came back in the second half, taking a 23-20 lead by the end of the third. The Monarchs rose to the challenge and scored another touchdown courtesy of Faraj-Washington, but Saint Francis ultimately ended up with the ball in the final minutes of the game and ran the clock out, handing Mitty a 30-27 loss. 

Despite the heartbreaking nature of the result, Coach Daniel Sullivan was “proud of how the boys played,” a message that was reciprocated by dozens of alumni who came to watch the game and the players themselves. Junior WR Marquis Marshall felt that the “secondary took a step forward” and was proud that “no deep balls were completed and the [defensive backs] came down to make tackles” when the action got past the linebackers in the second level.

This feeling was reciprocated by senior Quarterback Jonah Kroenung, who was “proud of the team’s ‘unexpected’ success” and felt the team “did their thing and showed what [they] can be.” To finish the interview, Kroenung said, “There’s no better group to do it with.”

As hard as a loss such as this one is to swallow in the moment, the challenge of dealing with it reveals another, more powerful truth: this team has talent. The loss carries weight because of all that was put into trying to win. They say nothing worth wanting comes without effort. But that effort doesn’t simply disappear because you didn’t get what you wanted. The numbers on the scoreboard tally the finite efforts of one night under the lights in San Jose. But the invisible tally of all that our Monarchs have invested does not go unnoticed. Instead, it forms the very ground upon which their next step up can be taken. And that is what defines Monarch football. The ability to take whatever comes your way and grow from it, both in football ability and life, is a cornerstone of the Monarch approach. The Gritty Mitty Movement isn’t just a movement towards records and championships; it is a constant movement of young men advancing on their path of life, learning how to pave new roads when there are none.

When Coach Danny Sullivan was asked what separates the Monarchs from the other 15,810 schools in the nation, he said “Archbishop Mitty is a program that is so much more than an on-field product. When you leave Mitty, you are going to take away the process and the work far more than the result of any game.”

So, next time you go out to watch your brothers dressed in black and gold, remember this: The Monarchs are always moving forward.