NEWBERG, Ore. -- The 2024 football season marks the 10th full season of George Fox football since returning to play in 2014.

While the football team didn't know it, their entire world would change with a GFU women's basketball game; the Bruin's Sweet Sixteen contest against Amherst was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sending the women's team home early from Boston as the university paused in-person classes.

What was initially thought to be an expanded spring break quickly turned into something else — soon, the Northwest Conference announced the suspension and ultimate cancellation of the 2020 spring season.

For the football team, these changes seeped into their sport, as the announcement soon came that the NWC would not play any fall sports in 2020. As September came and went, the normal roar of the Bruin crowd was noticeably silent from Stoffer Family Stadium as the football athletes attended socially distanced classes, waiting for the return of the sport they loved.

That decision finally came on December 15, 2020, as the Northwest Conference Presidents' Council announced that conference competition and championships would resume after January 1, 2021. And when the new year came, Bruin football finally had a plan — nine months after the world had changed.

George Fox and Pacific agreed to a home-and-away varsity schedule slated for March and April. The games would be played in front of empty stands but would be fully live-streamed by the university.

And so on March 26, the Bruins took the field for the first time in over one year to face the Boxers. Though the Bruins dropped their first game to the Boxers, 3-26, they improved drastically in their 35-7 victory two weeks later. 

Fox had four different quarterbacks play in the 28-point victory, with Haiden Schaan and Brennan Stults throwing touchdown passes to River Osen and Josh Hauenstein. On the ground, Stults, Logan Candanoza, and Faufano Autele all rushed for a score. On defense, Austin Brockamp, Jaron Marks, and Aaron Valenzuela all forced a fumble.

The final victory was much more than a spring game win in front of an empty stadium. It showed that despite everything that had happened in the past season — all the doubt, the uncertainty, the questions — George Fox football was here to stay.

Stay tuned each Wednesday of the football season as George Fox Athletics looks back at each of the past 10 years of Bruin football.