The EDSS senior football team defeated Glenview Park Secondary School Panthers 23-0 October 21 to improve their record to two wins and two losses on the season. They currently sit in fifth place in the top tier of the WCSSAA standings.
With two games remaining, coach Steve Karn is confident they can once again be in the top four and make the semifinals.
“We’ve been in every football game and the other two games we lost we were tied halftime and then penalties got the best of us. Our boys were a little undisciplined during those games, but if they can play the way they did on Friday, there’s definitely a lot of positives and hopefully we can we can make it to the semifinals again. We’ve been in the semifinals five years in a row, so we want to keep that going,” Karn said.
Despite this being the first full season in three years, the team has only seen an increase in the number of students wanting to participate.
“It’s been a bit of a whirlwind tour over the last couple of years but the interest level was off the charts. We’ve never really had a problem. I started the program back in 2005 and we’ve always had that interest, but it seems like the last few years it’s been even better. This year we have over 100 kids playing football between the juniors and seniors, which is unbelievable.”
With the junior team currently sitting at 5-0 and in first place in their tier, the program will become even stronger, Karn said.
“The program definitely isn’t going to be going down. It’s going to continue to grow over the next few years with the amount of kids that are out… and when you’ve got that talent pool down there doing that, well, that bodes well for the senior program when they’re coming up. We’re in a good position right now. We’ve been pretty solid for the last number of years. We’ve always been in those top four teams,” he said.
After dropping their first game of the season on September 30 against the Bluevale Collegiate Institute Knights 17-7, the Lancers came back strong six days later to defeat Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School 51-6. EDSS benefited from playing a team in Tier 2, Karn said.
October 13 saw the Lancers drop a 21-7 decision to Laurel Heights Secondary School, however the game was closer than the score indicated.
“That game was 0-0 at half time – that was definitely a winnable game, and they weren’t dominating us, by any stretch. It was evenly matched. We just made more mistakes,” Karn said.
Last week’s match against the Panthers showed what this team can do when it has a clean game, Karn explained.
“They’re a good solid team, but our guys played really hard and they didn’t make those mistakes, which allowed us to be successful. In football the team that makes the most mistakes usually doesn’t get the win. As long as we play a disciplined game, and the guys are starting to realize that, we have a chance to be in that final four and get a chance to play for the championship again,” Karn said.
The Lancers are back in action today (Thursday) against the Jacob Hespeler Hawks, who haven’t lost a game in eight years. Their final game of the regular season is against the Grand River Collegiate Renegades on November 3.
The match against the Renegades is the biggest game of the season for the Lancers, Karn said.
“If we beat them, we’ll make the final four. That’s basically what’s going to come down to is if we end up winning our last game of the season against Grand River we should end up in the Final Four. So the guys know that now, Friday was a really big game because if we would have lost that game there was pretty much no way. It was going to be very difficult for us to get to the Final Four. Now we’ve set ourselves up for a good opportunity to make it,” Karn explained.
