It was a tough home opener for the Sacred Heart Saints senior football team Friday afternoon.
The Saints surrendered four touchdowns in the first half and two more in the second half while scoring just once all game long as they fell to the Melville Cobras 45-6 in their first home game of the season. “It was a tough game. We knew they were going to be strong, but we didn’t get the best start,” said Sacred Heart head coach Trent Senger following his team’s second loss of the season. “When that happens you kind of get discouraged, and that’s what happened: the kids got discouraged early.
“The second half we got them a little better motivated and they seemed to work a little harder. We played much better in the second half, but couldn’t get back in the game.”
Sacred Heart trailed 31-0 at half-time before giving up two more touchdowns in the second half while Saints grade 11 quarterback Austin Walkington accounted for Sacred Heart’s lone score of the game, muscling his way through the Cobra defensive line early in the fourth quarter. “The kids an animal,” offered Senger on his starting quarterback. “You’d think that after the amount of times he got hit in the first half that he’d want to quit. Instead he came to me at half-time and said ‘give me the ball and let me run. Our throwing isn’t working so let me run’.”
Senger then said that he and his coaching staff decided to listen to Walkington’s suggestion for the last half of the game. “We ran a few more running plays than we normally do, but that’s because the kid wanted to run the ball,” mentioned the Sacred Heart head coach, adding that the coaches decided to take Walkington off of defence so he could focus solely on offence. “We took him off of defence and we did what we thought we needed to do, which was let him run the ball more often and it paid off with a touchdown.”
Injuries make it difficult
The 45-6 defeat wasn’t the only thing that the Sacred Heart Saints lost on Friday.
Already undermanned, the Saints lost their top defensive back, grade 10 Jantz Sawatsky, in warmups prior to the opening kickoff. “He jumped up in warmups and when he came down he blew his ankle and didn’t even play in the game today,” said Senger, adding that not only is Sawatsky their best defensive back, he’s also their backup quarterback. “Losing him really hurt because he was going to get some time on offence in the second half if he was healthy.
“We had a whole package centred around him with Walkington as the running back, but because of the injury we couldn’t utilize it.”
Saints all-around star Brody Kormos also picked up an injury on Friday, hurting his ankle early in the game while trying to make a tackle. “Our big gun on defence and offence got hurt in the first quarter, so we rested him on and off,” offered Senger, continuing, “but we’re just not the same team without Brody. He played a bit more in the second half and played okay, but we had to sit him occasionally so he didn’t get hurt.
“We also sat our bigger guys for the first half because they get gassed so fast, so we saved them for later and I think that showed in the score.”
Resting the larger players is something that the Sacred Heart coaching staff won’t be able to do in their next game in Esterhazy, as the Saints desperately need a win against a much larger team in order to remain in the provincial playoff hunt. “It has to be big against big when we play Esterhazy and then we have to let the chips fall where they may,” said Senger. “We have to go all out because we can’t lose.
“If we want to get to the provincials we can’t lose another game.”
Up next
The next action for the Sacred Heart Saints (0-2) will be Friday night in Esterhazy. Kickoff is at 7:00p.m. for Esterhazy’s annual Friday Night Lights game.
