The road to the Alberta Bowl stopped in Lloydminster for the Sturgeon Spirits.
The second-year football team hit a dead end in Saturday’s 56-0 demoralizing loss to the Holy Rosary Raiders in the Tier III provincial north final.
“We got demolished,” said Chad Hill, head coach of 8-3 Spirits. “It was a humbling end to the season and should be motivational for a productive offseason.”
Holy Rosary, winner of the previous four Tier III (450 to 749 students) provincial qualifiers against the St. Albert High Skyhawks, rolled up 21 points in the first quarter and led by 50 at halftime.
Two of Holy Rosary’s touchdowns were pick-sixes at the end of the first half and in the fourth quarter.
“Both their lines were better than us by a pretty big margin,” said Zach Froese, a Grade 12 quarterback, outside linebacker and punter. “Their O-line was one of the best I’ve ever played against. Football comes down to your O-line on offence and they were better than us.”
The second half was played with running time as Sturgeon tried to make the most of a difficult situation.
“For a lot of the guys, it's their last game ever so they wanted to go all out and have fun for the last time potentially because not everyone gets to move on to the next level and that’s what we tried to do even though we were outmatched,” Froese said.
It was an emotional conclusion to the high school careers for those graduating players.
“It was more tears than anything because of the group of guys that we’re going to miss rather than the actual game itself. A lot of our seniors connected very well this year so a lot of them want to be still part of this team and it’s sad because we’re not going to be a part of it any more. We will not be able to play with each other any more,” Froese said.
Holy Rosary (9-3), the Wheatland league finalist two years in a row, is ranked fourth in Tier III provincially and the last four Alberta Bowls for the Border City team ended in losses to the No. 1-ranked Cochrane Cobras (9-1), the five-time defending champions.
Sturgeon, ranked third in its first season as the metro Edmonton Tier III rep, went deeper into the season than expected. After losing the league opener 28-7 to the Paul Kane Blues, the division two Miles conference 8-0 champions, Sturgeon busted loose with six consecutive victories, highlighted by the 35-17 conquest of the Skyhawks that defined the season for both teams.
Equally as impressive as the beatdown of the Skyhawks (4-3) to gain the upper hand in the Tier III qualifying process was dethroning the defending Miles conference champion Archbishop Jordan Scots (4-2) in the opening playoff round 39-6 before succumbing to the Leduc Tigers (5-2) in the semifinals 29-14.
“We got off to a rocky start obviously against Paul Kane, but after that it was kind of a wake-up call for everybody. We had our one starting linebacker (Kalem Stuermer) out for that game as well as our D end and right tackle, Karl Haasz, and when they both came back they were a big part of our team. Our defence was clicking on all cylinders for the rest of the year for the most part until that Leduc game,” Froese said.
Sturgeon showed huge improvement from a successful inaugural season – 6-2 overall as the division three Gilfillan conference finalist and both losses were against the Ardrossan Bisons – to the 6-2 breakthrough in the Miles conference and the 27-13 provincial debut against the No. 6-ranked Whitecourt Cats (4-5) of the Mighty Peace league in the Tier III north semifinal.
“A lot of our key players were still in Grade 11 when we were in (division three) so a lot them had another year to develop when we went up to (division two) and that’s the reason why we got into the playoffs and a lot of it came from that Paul Kane game and most of our team waking up and saying we have to step up our game to compete at this level,” Froese said. “We were also really motivated to bump SACHS (Skyhawks) off because they’ve been uncontested for the last few years to get into provincials. There was lot of motivation and a lot of angry motivation because a lot of Sturgeon and St. Albert people don’t really get along that much so we wanted to knock them off.”
Froese, 17, is proud to be part of the rapid rise of the Sturgeon football team.
“It’s been amazing to have the opportunity to start something new and start something fresh and start it well. Just being able come in and start winning was really great especially with Chad there and that was a big part of it for a lot of the boys. That's why that culture is going to stay winning hopefully for the years to come because of the coaching staff that’s there,” said the Alberta Golden Bears’ recruit and Sturgeon’s nominee for the Miles conference MVP award after being honoured as the top player in the Gilfillan conference last year following his Grade 10 season as the MVP of the junior Bellerose Bulldogs in Sturgeon’s last season as a feeder school for the Bellerose football program.
