You don’t take the field against an undefeated team and expect otherwise.
And sure enough, things were close in the early going, with the Vikings holding a 6-0 lead at halftime of the Knight Ford Lincoln title game. But the local squad was able to find another gear in the cold conditions at MacDonald Athletic Field on Saturday night, and would go on to claim the league title with a 36-12 victory.
“It was good, I’m pretty proud of that team,” said Vikings head coach Brock Montgomery. “They’ve been together for a lot of years, which is a nice thing...this is the fourth and fifth year that these players have played together, and I told them after the game that I think they deserve it. They played well, they worked hard all year, they fought hard and it was just nice to see.”
The Vikings entered the contest with a 6-1 record and were coming off a 70-6 semifinal win over Yorkton the prior weekend. Weyburn, meanwhile was 7-0, and had defeated Swift Current 37-6 in their semifinal contest. As the two teams hadn’t faced each other in the regular season, there was a sense of the unknown heading into the big game.
“We were kind of going in a little bit blind, we had game tape we’d watched on each other, but until you get out there and playing you never know,” Montgomery said. “You can feel prepared but you’re always a little bit nervous in championship games.”
An important factor was the Vikings’ versatility. While they had a solid passing game, the weather ensured that the contest was going to be a grinding ground slog. And that’s where the Moose Jaw crew had shone all season.
That led to Jasper White, Kayden Nightingale and offensive player of the game Keaton Belsher chewing up yards throughout the contest.
“Those boys run the ball pretty hard,” Montgomery said. “But it takes a lot of effort with the blocking, they won’t get too far without those guys, so it was just a good team effort (Saturday) night.”
The Vikings broke out a trick-play wrinkle in the second half that turned the tide -- twice they were hemmed deep, and twice were able to recover punts. And a late-game punt return also flipped the field, keeping Weyburn from getting any kind of a run going as Moose Jaw piled up points.
“It was the game that we knew, we were expecting a battle since they have a good defence and so do we and it just came down to a few big plays, which is pretty much what you’d expect in a game like that,” Montgomery said.
Kayden Morhart was named the game’s defensive most valuable player.
The fact KMJMF was able to get a full season in at all in the midst of the pandemic era was a huge positive for all teams involved.
“It was nice to be able to play a full season, (league president) Bryan (Boys) did a great job getting everything together,” Montgomery said. “Last year it was kind of a broken-down version of the league where a bunch of teams couldn’t participate, it was just nice to have a full league this year and challenge yourself against the other teams you haven’t seen for awhile.”
And with all that and a championship season to boot, it means there will be plenty of positive memories for the 2021 Vikings.
“This just sends them off to play high school football with a really positive experience under their belt,” Montgomery said. “Some of them might be enemies playing on opposite teams in high school, but they have these memories and that’s always great to see when they put out an effort like that in a tough game.”
