NEWS PHOTO
JAMES TUIBB
Kai Noon, of the Hat High Hawks, celebrates as he scores a kick return touchdown in the first quarter of the Hawks Friday night game against the McCoy Colts.
It was a big night for Hat High as they the stifled the Colts to a score of 37-0.
The Hawks were able to capitalize on a kick return touchdown and a long receiving td, both caught by senior Kai Noon. For him, the game against the inner city rival McCoy, helped his team get into the game.
“It was a really exciting game. We had a couple of guys injured so our team really stepped up when our backups came in. Any time that we are playing another school in Medicine Hat we treat it seriously and we prepare all week. It was a good game for both sides,” Noon said.
Two rushing touchdowns from Tesema Veurink and Ryder Cooke, three safeties and a field goal also contributed to the Hawks lopsided score. Despite the big win and extending their perfect record to four wins, Hawks head coach Quinn Skelton was not quite happy with how his team performed.
“Not real pleased actually. I thought our execution was alright in parts of the game and I think pretty complacent and sloppy in other parts. I know we can certainly execute a lot better than we did tonight,” he said.
The one positive he drew from the victory was that his team was able to cycle in grade 10’s for the third and fourth quarter and let them get the experience of playing both sides of the ball and being in the end zone.
He says they’ll have to head back to the drawing board to prepare for their next matchup against the Crescent Heights Vikings who also won Friday night, as they beat the Brooks Buffalos 28-6. His plan is to get his team watching film on the Vikings game and their own, to build on this win and prepare for their matchup next Friday at 7 p.m at the Methanex Bowl.
“It’s back to the film and look after what we do. It’s as simple as that,” Skelton said.
Across the field, Colts head coach Darrell Grass described the loss as another learning experience for his young team.
“I think we were sort of caught like a deer in the headlights for the first little while and the team played better in the second half… we seen some good things out there, seen a lot of bad things and now we know what to fix,” he said.
The Colts are coming off of last weekend that saw them travel to Edmonton and take part in a controlled scrimmage. They head to Airdrie next Saturday for a matchup with BurtChurh High. Coach Grass says his team has some work to do in the video room to get ready for the game.
“We made some big mistakes, our ‘O’ line wasn’t doing very well in the first half, did a lot better in the second. Second half we were a lot better,” he said.
