When the news came out of Woodlawn Field last Tuesday, there was much rejoicing.
The Estevan Comprehensive School Elecs football team won a game for the first time since 2016, with a hard-earned victory over the Vanier Vikings. The victory of the football team, and the subsequent showers of athletic drinks don’t happen too often but when they do happen it’s cause to take notice.
Exactly how rare and sweet that win has been since Estevan joined the Moose Jaw High School Football League in 2009? It was their fifth win in the program’s 10th year in the Moose Jaw high school football circuit. There have been six years where the team lost all six regular season games it played, including the 2017 season. Last year, Vanier beat the Elecs in Moose Jaw 48-8 in the season opener for both teams.
Last year’s closest contest was the Oct. 5 game against Moose Jaw Central at Woodlawn where the Cyclones won 38-28. This was after the Elecs fell behind 32-6 at halftime.
At the time, Elecs head coach Mark Schott said: “I said from the start of the season that we're young and inexperienced and we're gaining experience as the season goes on… We return a large portion of our team which is really exciting for next year. But we lose some key players in that seven that are departing.”
In last year’s playoff battle at Moose Jaw’s Gutheridge Field, the Peacock Tornadoes took it to the Elecs, winning 49-6. It was the last game of high school football for a few members of the team and I’m sure once news of last Tuesday’s win came, they shared a smile with friends.
The Elecs’ offensive and defensive lines have done well this season in either getting pressure to the quarterback or supplying running space for the running backs this year.
The rest of the season will see the Elecs play three more games. All three of them will be a challenge, as the Swift Current Colts (3-1) and Yorkton Raiders (3-0), two teams that made it to the league final last year, are on the docket. The Moose Jaw Central Cyclones defeated Swift Current 37-10 on Saturday and are making their case to be included in the conversation for who is the best in the league with a 3-1 record.
In the Elecs’ only other two-win season in the Moose Jaw league, they defeated a winless Swift Current team twice in 2011. The other seasons in which they’ve won a game have been single win seasons (2016 and 2013, both wins over Vanier).
They’ve never beaten Moose Jaw Central or Yorkton since at least joining the Moose Jaw league, and it would seem to be a longshot to expect them to win this year.
Moose Jaw’s 3A football league, one of the best in the province, has been a tough climb in the past for the Elecs. But that climb seems to be finally reaching some sort of solid footing. I’ve had the pleasure of watching all their games this year and there are young players like Travis Eagles, Kaleb Bechtold and James Knibbs that have improved leaps and bounds since the start of the season already.
Even through the chill and cold of Saturday’s seemingly endless loss to Weyburn, there were players still wanting to make plays, improving the execution of their tackling and Eagles’ ability to hit the holes the offensive line created improved from the previous couple of games.
While the fourth quarter of the Weyburn game is best off forgotten, as long as defensive backs like Rylan Erdelyan and Jonah Bachorcik can stay on the field and healthy, they’ve got legitimate threats for interceptions. Eagles, sometimes playing in more of a safety’s role, can do this as well on those passing plays in the middle of the field.
All this is great news for the Elecs, who have had issues collecting victories other than the moral kind over the past ten seasons. For the first time in awhile, it feels like the fruits of the work of people like Schott and the entire coaching staff are turning the Elecs into something of a program, much like other schools have had. This year’s team will likely take a few lumps in the last half of their season but they’ll play their tails off until the end of the game each week and that will produce its own fruit.
It remains to be seen how well it will continue, but it isn’t at all out of the question to project ECS as a team to beat in 2019 and beyond.
