Melbourne Central Catholic football looks to reverse recent trend, off to good start

Week 1 of the 2023 high school football season couldn't have gone any better for the Melbourne Central Catholic Hustlers.

Being on the road at Astronaut High for its first game of the season, Melbourne Central Catholic won the game, 27-8, and first-year head coach Nate Hooks made it clear this is a new era of Hustlers football.

"1-0 is always better than 0-1," Hooks said. "I told everybody this year everything is different."

Week 1 Brevard HS football: MCC, Merritt Island, EG, Holy Trinity, Titusville get wins

The past two seasons saw many struggles for the Hustlers. The team won two games last year and one game the season before.

After opening the season with a big win Friday night, Hooks acknowledge the team still has some things to improve upon, but he felt the team also showed a lot of good.

"We have enough weapons to where we apply pressure to anybody," Hooks said. "We played fast, we played physical. Still made too many mistakes, so that's definitely something to work on next week, but this is promising."

The offensive weapons were on display Friday night with four different players scoring touchdowns. In the second quarter, quarterback Joseph Allen threw touchdown passes to Ramel Hernandez and Justin Woulard.

In the second half, wide receiver and UCF commit DayDay Farmer caught a touchdown pass from Allen and Caden Kelley added an exclamation point to the Hustler's win after he ran in a touchdown with 39 seconds left in the game.

Defensively, the Hustlers only allowed one touchdown to be scored and made a big stand at the goal line that allowed the team to hold a 14-0 lead just before halftime.

Though this win was big for Hooks and his players to start the 2023 season, he said this was something he wanted for a bigger reason.

"I wanted this 1-0 start for the MCC alumni, the parents, the faculty, the community and the players because they hadn't had too much to cheer for last few years and this is a good start," Hooks said.

See the week 2 schedule here: 2023 Week-by-Week Brevard HS football schedule

This Friday, Melbourne Central Catholic will look to get out to a 2-0 start when they travel to play the Space Coast Vipers in Port St. John.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: MCC football off to good start in 2023 season under new coach Nate Hooks