After opening the season with two home losses, varsity football head coach Gregg Miller is looking for his team to do one thing.

Bounce.

“We talk to our kids all the time about being a rubber ball,” Miller said. “If you slam that rubber ball into the ground and you’re not careful it’s going to bounce up and hit you right on the forehead. We tell our kids to bounce. You gotta be able to bounce.”

Still looking for its first win, the varsity football team looks to bounce back tonight as it hits the road for the first time this season to face 2-0 Irving at Irving Schools’ Stadium at 7 p.m.

Last year, Lewisville beat Irving by a score of 24-10. Head coach Gregg Miller said he doesn’t expect the team to win just because it won last year though.

“If we play well and execute, we’ll win,” Miller said. “It’s like Plano and Ennis. If we’d have executed and played well, we would have won those football games too. We’re still battling it out and we just have to execute in every play.”

Irving won its opener against WT White 43-0, then beat Grand Prairie last week 58-24. But with execution, Miller said he is confident in the victory for the Farmers.

“[Irving is] feeling pretty good about themselves, and they should,” Miller said. “They’ve played two very good football teams, and very good football games. On the other side, we’ve played two very good football teams. Plano and Ennis are very, very good, and I think it’s prepared us for this game, and I think our kids are very hungry to go out and show that we’re not as bad as what people think we are. We’re ready to go.”

Last week the team lost its game against Ennis by a score of 21-13, with the offense gaining 227 yards and 15 first downs, an improvement from the first loss of 22-0 against Plano with only 38 yards and three first downs.

“We did some things well,” Miller said. “We did some things better than we did the week before. Our offense moved the ball. They started out with a 17-play drive. The week before that we couldn’t even get a first down.”

Miller said he was pleased with the effort that the team has shown.

“I’m pleased that our students are working hard and not giving up,” Miller said. “They come to work and it bothers them and hurts them [to lose], but it’s not killing them. They know that they’ll live to fight another day and the sun’s going to come up tomorrow. So we’ll be okay.”

In last week’s game, the defense picked up during the second half. So far the Farmers have allowed 43 points in the first two quarters of games, and zero points in the last two quarters. Miller said the contrast between the halves points to the comfort level of the defense.

“The difference between the second half and the first half is that in the second half they’ve settled in a little bit and already got the dirt and the blood and all that on them,” Miller said, “and now they’re ready to settle in a little bit, but sometimes you gotta get hit in the mouth before you get ready. We gotta be the ones to come out and hit.”

Miller said improvement on defense will have to come from experience and from a desire to overachieve.

“Like I said, they have a bunch of young kids, a bunch of guys that played on JV, and it’s a different experience for them,” Miller said. “We’re not a bunch of 6-foot Division 1 kids. We’ve got some little fellas playing and they’ve really gotta fight, scratch and work for everything that they get. Nothing’s given to them. They’ve got ability and they’ve got talent but they don’t have the size and range of some of the other kids, but we’re doing okay.”

For the Farmers’ future, Miller said they can’t be focused on what’s happened early in the season, but on what they decide to do next.

“Hard times hit you in life and you gotta be able to bounce,” Miller said. “It’s not about when bad things happen or if bad things happen, it’s how you respond to it. Here we are again with a bad thing, and we have to respond.”