The good news: The Terry Fox Ravens are the first team in the BC High School Football Association this season to score points on the St. Thomas More Knights.
The bad news: The Knights scored more in their Friday Night Lights clash at Percy Perry Stadium in Coquitlam.
The Knights prevailed over the Ravens 15-8 in a titanic struggle where the rain mixed with the tears of the St. Thomas More players. It was an emotional victory for the visitors, who said goodbye to their longtime coach, Bernie Kully, on Thursday after he passed away from throat cancer on Sept.30.
“We warned our guys it was going to be like that and it certainly was,” said Fox coach Martin McDonnell, who attended Kully’s funeral along with some of his coaches.
The Ravens scored first and early, when quarterback Jevaun Jacobsen found receiver Albert Arecana in the end zone before the game was five minutes old. The conversion attempt failed, but Fox subsequently built their lead to 8-0 on a safety.
After that the vaunted Knights defence, which hadn’t allowed a single point in four games to start the season, shut down their hosts.
In fact it was that defence that set up St. Thomas More’s first touchdown, an eight-yard run by Tyler Eckert after a 50-yard interception by Ethan Austin put the Knights deep into Ravens’ territory. The two-point conversion succeeded, though it took a few attempts that moved the ball up and down the field because of penalties. After David Osho pulled in Dario Ciccone’s pass in the end zone, he looked skyward and pointed to the heavens; it was apparent how much this game meant to the Knights.
McDonnell took responsibility for the broken play.
“We gave them that first touchdown,” he said. “That was us getting a little bit greedy.
Fighting to break the 8-8 tie, Jacobsen repeatedly handed the ball off to his favourite running back, Jaden Severy, but every one of his 71 rushing yards was a war. Jacobsen himself ran for 114 yards.
Defensively, the Ravens bowed but didn’t break. Until Ciccone handed the ball to Eckert in a fourth-down-and-one situation that he turned into a romp across the field and down into the end zone.
“They came out and did some things we weren’t expecting,” McDonnell said. “They spread us out and we hadn’t seen that all year.”
As the Knights gathered downfield to celebrate their fifth win of the season and pointed skyward, McDonnell said the loss may have been a reality check for his charges, who came into the season ranked number one in the province on the strength of their provincial championship in last year’s Subway Bowl and have held that position ever since.
“It’s maybe not the worst thing,” he said. “We’ve got some big games coming up and we’ve already made the playoffs. We’re going to be playing better teams going forward.”
