Team Canada opened the World Flag Football Championship early Tuesday morning with a 34-33 victory over the fifth ranked Italians in Lahti, Finland. The Canadians, who are ranked twelfth in the world, were led by Quarterback Mason Nyhus who was born in Regina and starred at the University of Saskatchewan after graduating from Riffel High School in the Queen City.
Nyhus threw five touchdown passes in the victory which isn’t surprising to Team Canada Head Coach Chad Palmer, “Mason is just as good of a flag quarterback as he was a U sport quarterback, like he's a Hec Creighton runner up. Mason might be the best quarterback in the world to flag, from what we've seen from him how he manipulates the game and understands the defense. He's phenomenal. So we're loaded with playmakers, and we have two exceptional quarterbacks. It's a good team. Can't wait to find out how we’re going to look.”
The Canadians will play Singapore in their second round-robin game later Tuesday before wrapping up the round-robin against the host Fins on Wednesday. 32 teams from around the globe will compete for the gold medal and Palmer knows it won’t be easy to medal, “If you want to win, you got to beat them all. Yeah, looking at our draw, we're going to need a bit of help to avoid the Americans in the quarterfinals, because if we go undefeated and win our pool, we'd end up ninth. Like I said at tournament we have to beat everybody. You just want to avoid the US for as long as he can to get a little further down there, but I think that we have a team that can beat them all.”
Team Canada’s 12 athlete roster has eight Saskatchewan born players including Nyhus. Chad Braun, Mitch Hillis, Colton Klassen, Kyle Siemens, Everett Iverson, Clovis Lumeka, and Nixen Voll all hail from the Land of Living Skies.
Meanwhile, Canada’s women’s team also opened the tournament with a win early Tuesday morning with a 34-25 win over the Italians. They will take on South Korea in their next game.
