The Yorkton Peewee Gridders continued their dominance of Regina Minor Football (RMF) Peewee Division teams this past Saturday, eliminating the Regina Thunder from the 2015 Peewee Division playoffs with a 28-8 victory.
Star running back Willen Paligan once again led the way with three monstrous touchdowns while Carter Pawliw also found the end zone once.
Fellow running backs Josh Haczkewicz and Dreyden Chyz also put together strong performances and while they didn’t find the end zone they certainly set the Gridders up for scores. “Our running backs have been solid for us all year. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Carter Pawliw, Willen Paligan, Dreyden Chyz, Josh Haczkewicz, you name it. All of our guys are good,” suggested Peewee Gridder head coach Grant Edgar, continuing, “We wanted to extend our season and we wanted three more practices. In order to get three more practices we needed to win today and the kids took care of business.”
The Peewee Gridders got things rolling right off the bat as they won the coin toss and deferred to the second half, only to kick off and force a fumble that they recovered to give them the first possession of the game. “The opening play we forced a turnover and then on our first possession we drove it in and scored and then we scored again on our second possession to jump off to an early lead,” said Edgar, adding that ‘it’s always nice when you can get off on the right foot’ and that scoring first ‘really took the momentum from them’.
Defensively Brad Heskin’s three quarterback sacks played a huge part in keeping the Thunder offence at bay, while the entire defensive back corps comprised of Sam Hove, Vicaas Junek, Kenton Effa, Dylan Wiwcharuk and Kaden Fedak outmatched the Thunder receivers, registering several tackles each while Fedak came down with a huge interception in the second half that took the Thunder out of the game. “Our defensive backs really stepped up today. They’re a predominantly pass team and all of our defensive backs really played well,” offered the Peewee Gridder bench boss. “In a predominantly run league sometimes it’s easy to get away from the things that make defending the pass successful but they really stuck with it and kudos to them because they didn’t give up the big play today.”
The Peewee Gridders now turn their attention to the RMF Peewee Championship game, where they take on the Balgonie North Griffins, a team that has also been absolutely dominant the entire season. “Next week we have the North Griffins and we’re looking forward to it,” said Edgar. “We watched their semi-final game today and they’re a good team and I think we match up really well with them and I think it’ll be a really good football game.”
Kickoff for the Peewee Championship game is set for 12:00p.m. at Regina’s Leibel Field on Saturday, October 31.
