High school football season may still be many months away, however that did not stop the YRHS Raiders from engaging in some exhibition action this past weekend as the Raiders put on their bus pants and made the nearly three-hour trek to Brandon, MB, to take on the Crocus Plains Plainsmen.
The Raiders jumped out to an early 14-0 lead thanks to a couple of Jordin Rusnack orchestrated scoring plays, however the host Plainsmen cut the lead in half not long after, when they found the end zone to make it 14-7. 鈥淲e scored the first two touchdowns and then things kind of went dry for a little bit,鈥� said Raider offensive coordinator and assistant coach Jason Boyda via phone interview Monday evening. 鈥淭hen they scored and we knew we had to find our groove again.鈥�
The Raiders did just that, as they scored the next three touchdowns to take a commanding 35-7 lead before Crocus Plains managed to scored their second touchdown of the game to make it 35-14.
Crocus Plains then scored again to make it 35-21, but not to be outdone, the Raiders rounded out the scoring in the fourth quarter to take a 42-21 victory.
Grade nine quarterback Jordin Rusnack made a bid for next years鈥� starting quarterback role with an excellent performance.
The junior football quarterback connected with his receiving corps for four touchdowns 鈥� three of those to Matthew Balysky 鈥� and rushed for one more while throwing just one interception in the win. 鈥淗e (Rusnack) is a special kind of player and you can see that from what he did on the field in his first senior game,鈥� said coach Boyda, continuing, 鈥淗e was calm, cool and collected out there and only made a couple of mistakes, so he has a great chance that he鈥檒l be our starting quarterback next year.鈥�
Boyda said that while the win was great, the purpose of the exhibition game was to evaluate younger players and see who can fill roles vacated by graduating players such as Caleb Bymak and Nick Payne; something that the Raider coaching staff was able to do. 鈥淲e were able to evaluate quite a few of our young players during that game,鈥� mentioned Boyda. 鈥淲e were able to evaluate Jordin Rusnack at the quarterback position and he did phenomenal.
鈥淲e were able to evaluate Brody Popowich at the position that Caleb Bymak used to play and we played a lot of the younger guys on defence.鈥�
The Raiders will open their 2016 MJHSFL season up later this year in the fall.
