It was an exceptionally long day of football in Estevan Saturday, but there was no game that seemed to take more time than the Weyburn Eagles in their 57-28 win over the Estevan Comprehensive School (ECS) Elecs.
The Elecs were down 9-0 after they finished their first offensive series after a muffed opening kickoff return put a touchdown on the board for the Eagles and the ensuing kickoff return ended up with a Weyburn safety on the first play from scrimmage. Things got better for the Elecs after that auspicious start but ECS trailed throughout the game.
“Very similar to the game we played earlier this year against Peacock, we had a lot of guys go down,” said Schott. “On the positive side we were able to get a lot of guys in and get that taste of game experience. Those key guys, it was definitely a noticeable loss when they were out of the game.”
The Elecs lost the services of some key defenders through the game with apparent lower body injuries, like Hunter Eagles, Rylan Erdelyan and Jonah Bachorcik. Their replacements did well in their roles but Weyburn’s Chase Fillmore stormed ahead with 270 yards on 24 carries in the game, 190 of which were in the second half.
“There’s a lot of positives in the first half that we can look at,” said Schott. “There’s definitely some things we can adjust with our less experienced players who played in the second half. But we want to focus on the positives and hopefully we can bring that into our game against Swift Current next Saturday.”
On offense, Eagles was a big factor in the first half, running for two touchdowns on 68 yards in the first half on the ground, and catching two passes for 54 yards in that half as well.
“Hunter played a great game when he was in there but unfortunately he was one of those guys who left with an injury,” said Schott. “That was a big loss for us and we were going fourth or fifth player deep on our running back (depth chart). It makes it tough to run the football when we have guys in there who don’t normally play that spot.”
Weyburn had another pair of running backs have big games, with Alex Lund carrying the ball seven times for 113 yards and Clay Gust getting 87 yards on five carries.
This has been a tough stretch for the Elecs as they haven’t had a lot of time between games to practice some of their plays, but they get that this week before Saturday’s battle with the visiting Swift Current Colts (3-1).
“That was a really intense schedule and we’re happy to have a full week of practice to thoroughly address things we need to shore up,” said Schott.
