Staff
The annual Homecoming game was one to forget for the Muskie football team on Friday afternoon.
Fort High suffered its second-straight shutout defeat—this time dropping a 51-0 loss to the Vincent Massey Trojans.
The two-pronged running attack of Drew Drabik and David Edmunds chewed up plenty of yardage for the visiting Trojans, combining for three touchdowns on the ground.
Meanwhile, Vincent Massey’s aerial attack was led by quarterbacks Cole Prusak and Travis Irvine, who connected with Matt Isaac and Troy Szaura for long touchdown completions.
Prusak also ran one in for the Trojans, who improved to 2-0 early in the Winnipeg High School Football League season while the Muskies fell to 0-2.
“Our guys are getting physically out-manned and that’s a difficult thing to coach,” offensive co-ordinator Andrew George said.
“We can tell them where to go and what to do, but when we line up against any team in this league, they’re all going to have 60 guys and six coaches and we don’t have that,” he stressed
The Muskies gave a much-better effort from their 44-0 loss to host Kenora in Week 1, with plenty of ball movement on offence.
The black-and-gold got into the red zone several times but lacked that one big play to get in for the score.
“Driving the ball on offence and being able to do that got the guys’ confidence up,” George noted.
“Our running game still is not where we want it to be and our passing game is weak, but we’re making the right moves to get this team better.
“We did put the ball in the air a little more and that’s going to make [quarterback] Dan [Brunetta] more inconsistent,” George added.
Despite the lopsided score under “Visitors” on the scoreboard, the Muskie defence had some moments of brilliance, including two forced fumbles created by Andre Valenzuela that Britt Green recovered.
Josh Wilson also had an interception deep in Muskie territory in the second half.
“Guys were in the right spots. Josh Wilson got our one interception, Cody Hunsperger batted down a ball . . . and Luke Hudson batted another down,” Muskie defensive co-ordinator Bob Whitburn said.
“That’s stuff we didn’t see last Friday [against Kenora] and next week we’ll hopefully be that much better again,” Whitburn stressed.
“We’ve got three or four Grade 9s starting on defence, and they are learning trial by fire,” he added.
“They are out there for the first time ever playing this game, and they are learning the hard way.”
The Muskies now head to Winnipeg this Friday (Sept. 25) for a meeting with the River East Marauders (0-2), who were nipped 24-23 by Kenora last week.
