Mitch Calvert
Better effort, same result.
The Muskie football team suffered its second-straight shutout defeat of the young WHSFL season here Friday afternoon, losing the annual Homecoming game 51-0 to the visiting Vincent Massey Trojans of Winnipeg.
“It’s nothing against the guys who are here, they are doing everything they absolutely can, but until we can get 60 guys and six coaches, we aren’t going to be able to compete in this league,” Muskie offensive co-ordinator Andrew George remarked.
“We didn’t think that was going to be the situation this year, but is the program better this year than last year? Yeah, I’ve been here the last three years,” he noted.
“Our guys are getting physically out-manned and that’s a difficult thing to coach,” George added.
“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.
“We have a lot of guys who are helping out who stop at practice on their way home from work, and we have junior coaches helping us out, but we just don’t have enough coaches and players,” George stressed.
“The foundation is there. In four-five years, we’re going to be set if we can bring in more coaches and players, [but] with such a young team, we need a lot of individual attention and it’s getting very difficult to run this program.”
The Trojans proved too steep a challenge—getting touchdown runs from Drew Drabik and Cole Prusak before the game was five minutes old.
A blocked punt on the black-and-gold’s next possession gave the Trojans excellent field position deep in Muskie territory and they quickly converted on a touchdown pass to Troy Szaura in the corner of the end zone.
Another blocked punt later in the quarter again gave the Trojans the ball deep in the Muskies’ zone—and they punched it in from there to quickly build a 27-0 lead after just one quarter of play.
Punter Britt Green was given little time to get off both kicks as the Trojans stormed through the Muskie defenders seemingly at will.
“He’s got to learn to be quicker, but that’s another problem because we don’t have a kicking coach,” said George, who also runs special teams.
“I can tell him ‘kick quicker,’ but he doesn’t know what that means and I can’t tell him the technique.
“Britt in Kenora [on Sept. 11] kicked it like he was in the CFL and I don’t know how he does it because he doesn’t do it in practice all that much,” George noted. “But when it comes down to the game, he has a great leg.”
Green was given another chance to punt later in the game and connected for a deep boot to mid-field.
Another positive was the way the Muskies held the Trojans off the scoreboard in the second quarter.
The momentum was short-lived, however, as the floodgates opened in the second half.
Drabik ran in his second score of the game early in the third quarter, then an interception on the Muskies’ next drive again set up the visitors with good field position.
A valiant effort by the Muskie defence forced the Trojans to scratch out some short yardage gains, but the wall eventually caved when Edmunds rumbled in on a third-down conversion that seemed to deflate Fort High’s sails.
“We improved every quarter and it was much better than last Friday [against Kenora],” Muskie defensive co-ordinator Bob Whitburn said. “The score didn’t show it, but we were better with our assignments and were in the right spots.
“But again, we weren’t wrapping up our tackles.
“I was a lot happier with the way things looked as a team, but the individual stuff we have to work on,” Whitburn stressed.
On the defensive side of the ball, Andre Valenzuela forced two fumbles that Green recovered while Josh Wilson had a late interception to provide a silver lining despite the Trojans’ offensive onslaught.
“Guys were in the right spots. Josh Wilson got our one interception, Cody Hunsperger batted down a ball . . . and Luke Hudson batted another down,” Whitburn noted.
“That’s stuff we didn’t see last Friday [against Kenora] and [this] week we’ll hopefully be that much better again,” he remarked. “[But] we’ve got three or four Grade 9s starting on defence and they are learning trial by fire.
“They are out there for the first time ever playing this game, and they are learning the hard way.”
Some solace can be found in the way the Muskie offence directed by quarterback Dan Brunetta moved the chains at times—though a general lack of execution in the red zone kept them from scoring.
“Driving the ball on offence and being able to do that got the guys’ confidence up,” George said. “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.”
Another obstacle facing the Muskies is a general lack of depth, with just 25 players dressed and many of them required on both offence and defence.
“[It’s] tough talking to your ‘O’ lineman when he’s never on the sidelines,” George noted. “That’s where you make the adjustments.”
“It’s tough for the two or three of us [coaches] to be able to get involved with the little things during the game,” echoed Whitburn.
“There are little things I see out there, but I’m busy trying to run the defence and when the offence is out there, 90 percent of the defence is still out there.”
At one point, the Muskies had to put Brunetta in on defence because Valenzuela (the back-up quarterback) was banged up—meaning an injury to Brunetta would have forced in a yet-to-be-determined third-string pivot.
Fortunately, the team has stayed relatively healthy so far this season.
“We’ve had very little lower body injuries this year,” George said. “A couple guys with some upper body broken bones, but we very much pride ourselves on our pre-practice routine that [Shane] Beckett brought in a while ago.
“I think it’s helped,” he added. “No pulled muscles, one ankle [injury] but I think he’s going to be all right.”
A reluctance from other Fort High athletes to play football has made recruiting difficult lately.
“Would hockey athletes help us? Yeah, but if they don’t want to play football, then no,” George said.
“I’m not concerned about the guys who are not here. The guys who are here we’ll make better football players,” he reasoned.
“We’ve let guys go over the last few weeks, and I don’t care if we go down to 18 guys as long as it’s the 18 guys who want to be here.
“The guys are frustrated and all we can do is coach from week-to-week,” George stressed.
Despite giving up 95 points and being held off the scoresheet in their first two games, the Muskie coaches are confident progress will continue to be made over the course of the season.
“I can promise you we aren’t going to regress this year. I believe we will be in a position to win games by mid-season,” George predicted.
“It won’t be blowouts like this anymore.
“We aren’t going to regress . . . we’re not going to allow it,” he reiterated.
The Muskies (0-2) next head on the road to Winnipeg to face the 0-2 River East Marauders this Friday (Sept. 25). The Marauders are coming off a narrow 24-23 loss to the unbeaten Kenora Broncos last week.
“They’ll have 60 guys and six coaches, and we’re the underdogs,” George said.
“All I can tell the guys is, ‘We’re going to get you guys better as football players and as a team,’” he vowed.
