PARADISE, Calif. (AP) — Few things are powerful enough to bring people back to the scene of their greatest tragedy. For the community of Paradise that was nearly leveled by a wildfire, football is it.

Thousands of people packed Om Wraith Field on Friday night to watch the Paradise High School Bobcats play their first game since last November’s blaze. The players entered the stadium through the home football stands, led by last year’s seniors who never played their final scheduled game, and went on to win 42-0.

“I don’t want no sympathy,” said Elijah Gould, a left guard, before the game. “I want them to come take off our heads because that’s what we’re coming to do.”

The fire that raged in the foothills of Northern California took out nearly 19,000 buildings, including the homes of most of the players. Eighty-six people died, the highest total from a U.S. wildfire in a century.

Much of the town of 27,000 people dispersed. Before the fire, the Bobcats were 8-2, good enough to host a home playoff game. The school ended up having to forfeit the game.

In January, when school reopened at an office building by an airport, coach Rick Prinz had just 22 players from what had been a 56-member squad. The team had no field for practice and so they ran plays on a gravel lot, trying not to fall in the mud.

“I didn’t even know if we would have a football team,” Prinz said

But the team pulled itself together, and the town followed.

“On Friday nights in the fall, this is where you go. You go whether or not you have a kid that goes here,” said Laura Smith, whose son, Del, is a senior on the team. “(Friday’s game) is just a symbol of the people here trying to get their lives back and trying to feel like they are winners.”

“I know I felt like kind of a loser for a long time. Because you lose everything. We lost absolutely everything,” she said before the game. “And if we can come back and win, even if our team doesn’t win, we will win because we showed up.”

Running back Lukas Hartley lost his home. He moved to Oregon to live with his dad, but he left his heart in Paradise. Every weekend for three months, he drove 500 miles to spend a few days with his football brothers.

When his actual brother got a job with a company cleaning up the rubble from what was left of Paradise, Lukas moved in with him so he could finish his senior year there and play football.