Colts move to 4-0 by beating Huskies
- September 10, 2012
Jeff MacKinnon Media coordinator
The standings held up Sunday at McMahon Stadium, as the Calgary Colts remained unbeaten with a 32-9 win over the Prairie Football Conference’s last-place Edmonton Huskies.
Calgary, which is No. 1 in the Canadian Junior Football League rankings, are now 4-0. The Huskies are 0-4.
The Colts remain at home to play the tough Edmonton Wildcats at McMahon Stadium Sept. 16 at 2 p.m., before going on the road to face the Winnipeg Rifles (Sept. 23) and Huskies again (Sept. 29).
“Our goal is to first make the playoffs and then to host as many playoff games as we can. Those are our team goals. We have two consecutive home games and we need to win those games,” Colts head coach John Stevens said after praising his defence for limiting the visitor’s offence to few opportunities.
The Colts opened up a 16-2 halftime lead on field goals of 32, 44 and 26 yards by Andrew Fabian and a six-yard scoring strike from Jeremy Long to Rodreke Joseph at 2:43 of the second quarter.
The Colts had a chance to stretch their lead even more but Matt Lamoureaux had the ball knocked loose at the goal-line as he was about to finish off a 31-yard pass-and-run play; and the Huskies recovered.
Jonathan Heidebrecht was wide left on a pair of field goal attempts — from 43 and 40 yards.
Neither offence burst out of the gate to start the game. The Colts had 40 yards total offence in the first quarter and the Huskies 22, with only one of those yards on the ground. Calgary had 199 yards at the break and the Huskies 83.
The Colts finished with 419 total yards to the Huskies’ 211.
“Our defence gave our offence a chance to get some momentum,” Stevens said.
“We have a lot of newcomers to our defence. We are halfway through our season and we are seeing a lot more consistency from our guys.”
Dereniwski also praised Colts’ rookie defensive players for stepping up Sunday.
“Our young guys are ready on the sidelines to jump in and show what they’ve got. They didn’t budge much today, so we are proud of them” the defensive captain said.
“It took us awhile to get started but to hold them to a few singles and a couple of field goals was great. Coach Stevens was proud of us and we are proud of ourselves, too, especially of our young guys.”
Colts starting QB Derek Cooper, who split duties with Long on Sunday, hooked up with Ben Hnatiuk on a 39-yard TD pass play early in the third quarter and Chucks Okafor swept around the right side from three yards with 3:42 remaining in the third to put the Colts up 30-6.
Heidebrecht sandwich a 27-yard field goal between Hnatiuk and Okafor’s scores in the third and added a 39 yarder in the first minute of the fourth.
Heidebrecht surrendered the final points to the Colts on a safety at 10:09.
Cam Fox had a productive game for the Colts with 70 yards on nine carries, the bulk of those yards coming on a 30-yard burst. Okafor finished with 12 carries for 55 yards. Joseph had five catches for 57 yards. Cooper finished with seven completions in 18 attempts for 99 yards and two interceptions. Long was 4-for-7 for 79 yards.
Defensively, Dereniwski led the Colts with seven tackles, two assists and 17.5 defensive points. Patrick MacDonald had two tackles, two assists and an interception for 10 points. Mitch Bec had three tackles and Skylar Pinchak had an interception on Edmonton’s first play from scrimmage.