Bulldogs punch ticket to football final
With his team sputtering along in the Niagara Region High School Athletic Association senior football Tier 1 football semifinal Thursday, Sir Winston Churchill’s Josh Morley cranked it up and led his team to a 49-13 victory over the visiting Eden Flyers.
Churchill had built a 21-0 first-quarter lead and began playing like the game was over and it could start planning for the league final. But Eden had other ideas, cutting the lead to 21-7 and stealing all the momentum.
Up stepped 12B student Morley. He scored on a 53-yard run on Churchill’s next possession after Eden’s score to give the Bulldogs a 28-7 advantage going into halftime. The 18-year-old followed that up with a 26-yard TD catch on Churchill’s first possession of the second half and then put the game away in the third quarter with a 35-yard interception return for a major.
“He’s a hard worker and he’s the leader on the team,” Churchill head coach Peter Perron said. “He’s my top captain because of his dedication, heart and spirit. It is not about him, it is about the team. It is service above self.”
The 5-foot-9, 150-pounder is down to his final high school games and he is not going down easy.
“I told the guys before the game that we need this. For all the 12Bs on the team, it could be our last game and we have to play for each other,” he said.
Football is part of Morley’s existence.
“It means everything to me and it has made me the person I am today,” he said. “I wouldn’t be the same person that I am and something else comes out for me on the football field. I can talk to kids and I love it. It builds character.”
Morley feels the 2021 version of the Bulldogs is much different than the one that got thumped by the A.N. Myer Marauders in the 2019 championship game.
“The mindset is there,” he said. “These guys want to work and it is a brotherhood in the locker room. We have never had that before. Every time you walk in everybody is excited to see each other and ready to work.”
Churchill also has a number of impact players on its roster.
“It helps a lot that we all have been playing in this league since Grade 9 and none of us played junior varsity,” Morley said. “Guys have gotten older, they’ve put in the work and they are trying to impose their will on the rest of the team. It is embracing the culture of working hard, coming to practice and going 100 per cent.”
The Bulldogs showed for the second time this season that they don’t play well with the lead. They were up 21-3 on Myer and gave up 35 straight points and after building a 21-0 lead on Eden, they had to pulled out of their doldrums by Morley’s heroics.
‘We take mental breaks and we have mental lapses,” Perron said. “We get ahead and then we play down. We can’t do that against Myer.”
He is going to do all he can to make sure his team stops with its bad habits.”
“We have a lot of work to do next week and I am going to be a taskmaster with them.”
It was also worrying to Perron that his team took 15 penalties for 115 yards.
“It’s not typically what we do and I don’t know what it was,” he said. “We fell asleep at certain points. That is going to be corrected, big time. Practice is not going to be fun.”
That practice will be devoted to beating Myer.
“I have played Myer so many times in these big games and I know what we need to do and what we need to correct,” he said. “And we are going to correct it. No ands, ifs or buts about it because they are going to get a reality check from me.”
Despite the loss, Eden coach Jeff Webster was more than happy with his team’s season. Eden, a Tier 2 squad, went 4-1 in the regular season before falling in the semifinals.
“I am very, very happy with the season as a whole and the kids with their effort, their attitude and they were great at showing up at practice all year,” he said. “Going forward, we have a lot to look forward to.”
The Tier 1 and Tier 2 teams played a combined schedule this year and while Eden was a contender for a Tier 2 championship it was in tough against the Tier 1 Bulldogs.
“We were very excited to be in the Tier 1 semifinals and it was a great learning experience,” Webster said. “Sir Winston is about as good a team as we played this year and they did a great job getting ready for us.”
His favourite part of the season was seeing his team’s attitude.
“We had 95 per cent participation at practice every day which has never been the case for as long as I have been at the school,” Webster said. “We had good numbers, we were able to practise well which ultimately showed in the fact that we won four games in a row.”
He was glad that the pandemic didn’t cancel football in 2021.
“At the end of the day, if nothing else, I was just happy that we got to play football.
STATS PACK
Bulldogs 49 Flyers 13
Cat’s Caboose Player of the Game: Churchill’s Josh Morley with a 53-yard TD run, a 26-yard TD catch from Ryan Cormier and a 35-yard interception return for a TD.
For the Sir Winston Churchill Bulldogs: Morley, three TDs; Justin Savoie, TD runs of four and 16 yards; 12-yard TD pass from Cormier to Quinn Johnston; 20-yard TD pass from Cormier to Brady Pupek; Johnston and Janal Williams, interceptions; Max Buffong, fumble recovery.
For the Eden Flyers: 28-yard TD pass from Sam Miele to Ogo Ogunkeye; 42-yard TD pass Miele to Ian Maskaluk; Charles Williams and Nigel Hurd, interceptions.
Game stats: Net offence: SWC 284, Eden 157. First downs: SWC 13, Eden 7. Turnovers: SWC 2, Eden 3. Penalties: SWC 15 for 115 yards, Eden 5 for 35 yards.
Up next: The Bulldogs advance to the Niagara Region High School Athletic Association final next week against the A.N. Myer Marauders.
