The Estevan Comprehensive School Elecs football team played close with the Weyburn Eagles but Weyburn’s depth at the less experienced levels ended up coming through for them Friday.
The teams played a controlled scrimmage in Weyburn in advance of the 2018 Moose Jaw High School Football League season and the Eagles came out on top 28-7, but not before some of the players in new positions started establishing themselves on the field.
Each team came up with five different personnel groups and those teams battled each other for a few plays at a time with coaches helping out on the field.
“With our first couple of groups, it was more experienced groupings, moving from more experiences to the rookies on the team,” said Elecs head coach Mark Schott. “Our first couple of groups matched up really well with Weyburn and it was 7-7 for most of the game.”
Schott said they wanted to get a good look at the young players and rookies and started rotating those players in to get them a taste of high school football.
“I think our rookies were a little bit more new to high school football than Weyburn’s younger players,” Schott said. “Weyburn … was able to pull away a little bit.”
The core players, though, were playing well against the Eagles, who, like the Elecs, lost in the first round of the playoffs last year.
“This is really our first look at our young quarterback, Kaleb Bechtold, and he played really well,” said Schott. “Another new player that stood out for us is Jonah Bachorcik. He played some linebacker, some running back and some slotback and he looked really good… And we had some big guys on our line that played really well, so our core group, we’re hoping they can match up against anybody in this league and put us in a good spot to be successful.”
The Elecs will have the first week of the season as their bye week but will hit the road Sept. 14 for a game at Moose Jaw against the Peacock Tornadoes, last season’s semifinalists and perennial provincial football powerhouse in 3A.
“We’ll have an opportunity to see the game film of all the other teams with having the first week bye,” said Schott. “We’ll be able to have a chance to look at Peacock, both from last year’s film and their week one game from this upcoming season, and we can plan accordingly.”
Schott will also be doing some recruiting at ECS now that school is back in this week. They took 27 players to Weyburn and Schott would like to see 10 more on the roster in time for their next game.
“We’re always looking to add to our lineman group, our O-line and D-line because that’s always a physically demanding position,” Schott said. “But we’re looking to add anywhere and everywhere, anyone that’s interested in playing for us, we’d love to have them out.”
Schott said the players currently on the team have also been talking to their friends to try to get them out.
“We’re hoping we can see some new faces over the upcoming days and in the long run that’ll make us a better team,” he said. “There are some concerns from some players who haven’t been out yet that maybe too late, or that they’ve missed too much already, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We have a lot of time between now and our first league game to get everybody caught up and ready to play.”
