Hawks get ready for provincial final

By Ryan McCracken on November 16, 2018.

rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com @MHNMcCracken

The Medicine Hat Hawks will be flying blind into Saturday’s Alberta bantam football Tier 2 championship game at the Methanex Bowl.

The Hawks have gone undefeated on their run to the provincial final, but they’ll be entering the big game without any film or scouting on the North champion Edmonton Mustangs. While it’s sure to provide Medicine Hat’s strongest test of the season, halfback Jillian Hullah says they’re more than up to the challenge.

“We’re going to work our hardest and put 100 per cent effort in no matter what,” said Hullah, whose Hawks hit the field against Edmonton at 1 p.m. “No matter if we don’t know how they play, we’re still going to go our hardest.”

In a perfect world, the Hawks would have obtained footage from Edmonton’s previous matchups and had the past week to study and prepare accordingly. Instead, they’ve been gearing up to adjust on the fly.

“We’re kind of coming into it knowing that if we play our game and make some adjustments as we go É and if we have to change stuff up then we can. We talked as a coaching staff and we might use our two timeouts in the first quarter just so we know where we’re going and what we’re doing,” said Hawks coach Scott Howes, adding he believes the Mustangs managed to gather some intel on Medicine Hat. “We would love to have a little bit more than we do. We’re going on basically past history of what they are and if their coach has changed, then it might change. We really didn’t get what we were looking for. The unfortunate part for us is we believe that they’ll have film on us. They’ll have eyes on us and we don’t on them.”

It’s been a long road to the title game for the Hawks. Hullah points out the team was struggling to find the win column just two years ago, but in the time since they’ve managed to grow as a team and combine to create a potentially unstoppable force on the field.

“We’ve always had this great team bonding, but this year we’ve worked our hardest, we’ve been with each other for three years now so we have this amazing chemistry and we work together so well,” said Hullah, who will close out her bantam career Saturday. “It just shows that our team is unstoppable, and because I’m a girl it just feels really cool to have this opportunity.”

Howes added the Hawks had a strong core of players join the team as Grade 7s two seasons ago. While it was an uphill climb featuring plenty of lopsided losses and tests of adversity, the Hawks put in their hours — and now they’re within sight of the summit.

“They’ve taken their lumps, because we didn’t win many games over the last two years, but because of their hard work, dedication and ability to just play on a higher level, it’s helped them grow into this,” said Howes. “You only make it to so many provincial championships in your lifetime and to be able to play the last game at home is, I think, an amazing thing for them.”

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