The Oak Park Raiders are bloodied, battered, and winless—a defending two-time champion of the Winnipeg High School Football League that hasn’t looked the part so far this season.
It stands to reason these circumstances have them in a particularly bad mood—and the Muskie ‘A’ squad will have to deal with their wrath there this Friday.
The host Raiders (0-2-1) and the Muskies (0-3) will collide in a vital game for both sides during Week Four of the WHSFL.
“Oak Park’s just like everybody else,” remarked Muskie head coach Bob Swing, whose team will be looking to stop a 14-game losing streak dating back to the 2001 campaign.
“They’ve got good players who know their systems, and they know they can’t turn the ball over to win,” he noted. “They have very good talent, and a good, quick, big defence.”
Swing said the biggest danger may not be the Raiders, who dumped the black-and-gold 35-8 in last year’s WHSFL quarter-finals, but the possibility of his players looking ahead to what awaits on the other side—the end of a bizarre schedule that forced them to go on the road for the first four games of the season.
“You don’t want to look past this game,” stressed Swing. “But we are relieved it’s over. We’re finally getting to see what the light at the end of the tunnel looks like.”
What has Swing’s confidence buoyed is the season-best performance by his troops last Friday, who held a 27-12 lead with eight minutes left before falling 30-27 to the Kelvin Clippers (2-0-1).
“We’re coming along nicely,” he remarked. “We know where we need to be on the field now. We just want to make sure we keep getting better.”
The Clippers had vaulted into a 12-0 lead, but the Muskies got 20-yard field goals from Craig McTavish and Andrew Sonnasinh to cut the lead in half.
But Sonnasinh’s day came to a crashing halt when the senior kicker/receiver caught a screen pass and was taken down by five defenders, who twisted his body so sharply on contact that it snapped his fibula.
“At least it wasn’t a bad break . . . we were lucky that way,” said Swing.
The Muskies grabbed their first lead of the season when Kevin Gemmell caught a five-yard touchdown strike from Andrew George in the second quarter to send Fort Frances to the locker room at halftime with a 13-12 lead.
Rather than settle for their small victory, the Muskies spent the third quarter trying to make an official notch in the win column.
Gemmell, who racked up 148 yards in the game, scored his second major of the day (and sixth of the season) on a 40-yard pass play to make it 20-12.
Then Thomas Edwards, who missed the previous week’s game against the River East Kodiaks because of an ankle injury, broke free in the Clippers’ secondary on a running play and raced to a 45-yard touchdown to inflate the lead to 27-12.
But while the Muskies held the tools for victory in their hand, their inability to nail down the win reared its ugly head with eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter.
A pass-and-run touchdown that Swing called “a lucky break” was taken in by the Clippers, with the two-point conversion making it 27-20.
Then George was hit just as he was delivering the ball and the Clippers made a diving interception. Minutes later, it was a tie ball game—and the Muskies’ house was crumbling.
“The ceiling fell in,” Swing said without reservation. “Some of the things that happened were beyond our control, and some of the times, we just didn’t make the plays when we needed to.”
Kelvin booted a 30-yard field goal late in the quarter to regain the lead, but with 1:20 left, Fort Frances faced a long field and an opportunity to exorcise their ghosts.
But a last-ditch drive stalled at the Clippers’ 35-yard line and it was another case of wait ’til next week.
“It just came down to bad breaks . . . we couldn’t move the ball when we had to,” said Swing. “We’re going to have to stop taking silly penalties. We’ve got to do a better job of protecting the ball.
“The way this league is this year, it’s even more true that the team that makes the least amount of mistakes will win the game,” he added.
After Friday, the Muskies will play their final three games of the regular season on home turf, starting with the annual Homecoming game Oct. 3 against the Churchill Bulldogs.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
