The Hanley Sabers senior boys football team has secured a home date against the Elrose Eagles in the provincial quarterfinals after knocking the Central Butte Bulldogs out of the playoffs Oct. 19 at the Jungle.
Sabers head coach Mark Anderson said they don’t know much about the Elrose team, which advanced to the Oct. 26 quarterfinal game after beating the Eatonia Spartans 62-45 a week earlier at Elrose. He said the Sabers have never lined up against them, but expects the Eagles to be strong.
“They have five wins and a tie, so they’re a five-win team,” said Anderson. “They came in second in their conference, so that’s why we’re playing them. Then our second place team is playing the first place team in their conference. Gull Lake will be playing Kerrobert.”
Jess Kingwell, head coach of the Eagles, said his team that is made up of players from Elrose, Dinsmore and Kyle doesn’t know much about Hanley as well, except that they have some big bodies. He said they do know the Sabers hit hard and tackle well, so they’ll have to get a few good blocks to get their balanced offence going.
We’re “quite good actually,” said Kingwell. “We do some runs, some throws and try to keep the defence off guard and catch them off guard when we can.”
Kingwell said their 62-45 win over Eatonia was a tale of two very different halves. He said they came out “really strong” in the first half, but forgot they still had to win the game in the final two quarters letting the Spartans right back into it.
“It definitely wasn’t our best second half this season,” he said. “In fact it was probably one of our worst ones. We played Eatonia twice already up to that point. We tied them our first game of the year and we beat them quite easily in our second one, so I think (our players) had that in mind and were maybe looking past them already. They definitely gave us a run for our money.”
Anderson said the coaching staff is unhappy about how the score got away in their match against Central Butte and it doesn’t reflect the strong game the Bulldogs put up. He said Central Butte marched the ball down the field most of the game, but couldn’t put it in the end zone and then his offence got rolling.
“It was 18-8 after the first quarter,” he said. “It was 38-8 (at the half), but definitely it felt different than that. They really moved the ball well. Again our depth came into (play) and they were playing multiple players both ways. We don’t do much of that and if we can stay tight with a team usually we can do well later.”
Sabers safety Mike Lohrey lead the defence against Central Butte with a combined 21 tackles and assists. Lohrey also managed to score three touchdowns when the coaches threw him in for a few running plays. Hanley also was helped on the scoreboard by offensive end Kody Rowlet who made it into the end zone twice while also racking up over 200 yards receiving.