In the 2017 football season Perry High fought their way to their first state championship game against Chandler High at Arizona stadium in Tucson, Perry lost (49-42).

Since Perry was on fire last season, losing one game in regular season, fans and the football community saw a chance for the future team to take Perry back to the championships.

As the 2018 season kicks off for the pumas, losing players to graduation like quarterback Brock Purdy and losing players to injuries like senior D’Shayne James, along with many others, people in the football community did not see any chance for the football team to do well in regular season, let alone make it to the state championship.

“I’m not surprised that Perry is doing well because they’ve had continuity As far as the coaching staff, and the school has a huge student body with a lot of great athletes. I think everyone in the high school football community expected Perry to be good, but weren’t sure how good they would be at quarterback after Brock Purdy graduated,” Ralph Amsden said.

Football writers in the community did not see Perry to make it to the top ten seed since losing a lot of players but in fact they finished the regular season (11-2) as the sixth seed in 6A. Proving many people wrong who doubted the football team.

“Perry always had there own team, we didn’t have a lot of supporters. As we started winning we got more supporters and Perry has always been a family.” Travis Calloway explained, “ I knew we were going to comeback just because of the leaders we have. ”

Perry football team has a reputation of choking and just doing poorly from previous years. Not having any glorious moments or big name players, no one looked at the football team as anything special. The pumas has since grown stronger and faster along with gaining respect from the football community and gained more fans.

“There’s been a huge shift, it used to be all about Hamilton and Chandler and now it’s about us (Perry) and Chandler… we didn’t have the speed to compete with back then and now we have some game breakers on the team and that makes a huge difference.” Mr. Bernier said

Perry football team  has come a long way from the opening of the school to now. Showing true talent on the team. Amsden explained “ … would not be surprised to see them (Perry)  representing 6A in the title game for the third year in a row.”

Along with that, Perry has gained another chance to play against Chandler at the Arizona University State stadium.