The Moose Jaw Marauders overcame a 22-0 deficit at the half to tie the game 29-29 with six minutes to play, but the Yorkton Raiders would go on to take a 37-36 victory in overtime during the title contest on Saturday evening.
“Tale of two halves, right?” said Marauders head coach Colin Belsher. “That was my message after the game, the first half might have been worst half of football I’ve been a part of just in terms of mental errors. Yorkton’s good, and we knew we had to play well, but just with the mental errors we had, it was tough.
“But football is a game of momentum and a positive mindset is what I kept preaching and they believed and they believed and they believed and it came down to two-and-a-half yards in overtime.”
A pair of big plays on defence proved to be a major part of Moose Jaw’s comeback -- a third-quarter fumble recovery for a touchdown by Devin Baumann and fourth-quarter pick-six by Cole Breitkreuz got the Marauders within striking distance.
Running back Ryan Vincent then tied the game with a short run, one of his many carries for many yards on the day.
“I think we came out pretty flat-footed to start and at halftime we made some adjustments,” Vincent said of battling back from such a large deficit. “The boys found their love for the game and when the boys came back out and they came back out swinging. That second half, we were a totally different football team out there. But Yorkton showed up as well and I’m really proud of how we went just left it all out there.”
Oh, did the Raiders ever show up.
Running back Garrett Ellis churned up yards from start to finish in the contest, and even had a kick-return touchdown in the third quarter that could have been a game-ending dagger.
But penalties started to mount in the final quarter, stifling Yorkton’s offence and preventing them from retaking the lead.
That all set the stage for overtime, where Moose Jaw scored first. An objectionable conduct penalty to the Marauders on Yorkton’s OT score gave the Raiders a chance to go for the two-point convert, and Ellis would make no mistake, punching it on for the one-point win.
As entertaining as the game ended up being, just the fact it was being played was the product of a ton of hard work and preparation by Moose Jaw Minor Football president Bryan Boys and Raiders head coach Jason Boyda.
The Spring League featured teams from the two finalists and Weyburn playing a four-game mini-season with the goal of giving seniors at least some semblance of football in their final year. Moose Jaw’s entry was made up of players from all three local high school teams.
And you better believe the players were appreciative.
“It was awesome, I’m really happy with how it all worked out,” Vincent said. “I wasn’t expecting it to be this fun and this competitive with the way everything was going with COVID, but I’m really grateful we were able to get a little bit of a season and that (Boys and Boyda) were able to put this together.”
Vincent was especially impressed with how well the team meshed despite being rivals in a normal year.
“It came together pretty quickly, and obviously with three different schools coming together as one team, there was a lot of worry for how we’d get along, but right from day one we were like brothers and that was really nice,” he said.
Even coach Belsher couldn’t help but show a little emotion when talking about his charges.
“That was a character piece,” he said. “I was extremely proud of these guys, being able to coach kids from all of these schools and having them buy into what we were doing, they all bonded as one big team and it’s really cool… it was just fantastic to be a part of.”
