The Estevan Sherritt Coal Miners atom football team kicked off their regular season on Saturday with a 28-0 loss to the Regina Bears in the provincial capital.
Although it was not the result they were looking for, there were some things to be encouraged about.
"We went into the game with only 23 kids due to other ones still being on holiday. We had some very exhausted little Miners by the third quarter," said second-year head coach Wanda Harron.
The teams were scoreless after the first quarter, with the Bears scoring a touchdown in the second. By the end of the third quarter, they had taken a 22-0 lead.
"All in all, I'm actually very OK with how things went," said Harron. "For us to be down 6-0 at the half, I thought was pretty incredible. That touchdown was one of the longest drives in minor football I've ever seen. That poor defence really made them work hard."
Teams often rack up touchdowns on big running plays in minor football, but the Miners' defence did well in that respect. However, they struggled to stop the Bears' passing game.
"The one thing I'm very encouraged about that we saw on Saturday is we never gave up the big long run that we've seen in the past. There were no big runs that went for touchdowns. The run never beat us at all during that game," said Harron.
"We had too many kids anxious to get in on the tackle and our defensive backs forgot about their receivers. It was totally Regina seeing that our kids wanted to tackle and not waiting to see what happened with the play."
Last year, blocking was, well, a major stumbling block for the Miners. Harron said it "wasn't too, too bad" on the offensive side of the ball against the Bears, but that they would work on blocking on the run in practice this week.
"There was a little bit of mistiming between our centre, quarterback and running back, but that's just going to take practice and more practice," she added.
"Defensively, our tackling was very strong. We do have to remind them though that everybody tries to get in on a tackle to swarm the ball," Harron said, noting that there were times Saturday when only one player was in on a tackle.
The Miners had no turnovers on Saturday and kept the penalties to a minimum.
"One thing I'm very happy with is we never turned the ball over once. In last year's opener, we fumbled three times. Another very good thing that I was very happy with is I think we had maybe two or three penalties, if that. The kids were not offside or anything, so that was pretty good," Harron said.
The Miners will play their home opener on Saturday against the Regina Eskimos. Game time is noon at Dana Quewezance Memorial Field.
