The ECS Elecs football team were jumped on early and often by the visiting Yorkton Raiders Tuesday at Woodlawn Field and the final result wasn't pretty.
Somewhat fortunately, the Elecs won't have a lot of time to dwell on their 73-0 loss at home to one of the best teams in the Moose Jaw High School Football League and have a match at Weyburn Saturday to think about instead.
Less than eight minutes into the game, the Raiders had opened up a 20-0 lead on the Elecs with a trio of touchdowns – with only one convert – and a single on a wide field goal. From there, the Elecs couldn't stop the bleeding.
“It was tough,” said Elecs head coach Mark Schott. “With a young group, our emotions faded quickly. It was a task to keep everybody focused and their energy up.”
The Raiders stomped Weyburn at Yorkton's home opener last week 56-0. Between quarterback Jordan Rusnak and multiple touchdown receptions and running plays from Matthew Mandziuk, Braden Kitchen and Matthew Balysky the Elecs found themselves down and out.
“With our youth, we've got a ways to go,” Schott said. “It was definitely a learning experience tonight and as unfortunate as the score was, our guys need to see the type of football and effort that it takes to compete at this level. We'll take what we can what we can from this game and refocus for Weyburn on Saturday.”
Weyburn also played Tuesday, losing 21-3 to Moose Jaw's Central Cyclones. The matchup at Weyburn this weekend should be a much closer game. The ability to refocus quickly will be a good thing for Schott and the Elecs.
“We can learn from this game and we have to shift our focus right away,” he said. “There's no beating ourselves up over this game. We also have an opponent on Saturday who also had a very tough game against the same team. We can go into Weyburn and hopefully have a close, competitive game that comes right down to the end.”
The execution wasn't very good against Yorkton, so they'll have to fine tune that.
“Just guys knowing where they have to be and being in the right position,” he said. “We should be there, and for some reason it's not there right now. We're going to have to adjust that.”
The Elecs' next home game is Sept. 30 at 2 p.m. against Moose Jaw's Peacock Tornadoes, along with Penta Completions Estevan Minor Football's 'Football Day in Estevan' in which pee wee, bantam and atom teams are also playing at home.
