The weather, seven degrees with heavy rain and strong winds, basically took away the Raiders air attack in Saturday's MJHSFL road tilt against the Vanier Vikings, making their offence extremely predictable.
But just because their offence was predictable doesn't mean it was stoppable as Zach Kais, thanks in large part to Peter Kozushka, Noah Zerr and the rest of the Raider offensive line ran over the Vanier defence, picking up 222 yards on 31 carries while scoring three touchdowns.
Caleb Bymak also found the end zone, putting the nail in the Viking coffin with a 39-yard run late in the fourth quarter.
Raiders quarterback Nick Payne completed 10-of-17 passes for 110 yards on the day to give the Raiders a total of 378 total yards of offence while the Raider defence was its suffocating self, stymying the Vanier offence all game long, allowing the Vikings just 70 total yards of offence in the shutout victory.
However things didn't start off all that well for the Raiders on Saturday.
An issue with their first bus just outside of Melville forced the YRHS team back to Yorkton to switch buses, resulting in the team getting to Moose Jaw's Gutheridge Field late and causing them to rush their warm-ups. "We came out a little bit flat in the game," said Raiders head coach Roby Sharpe. "It's one of those things where we get on the bus, the bus breaks down, we turn around, come back home, get on a different bus and head out. That throws our whole routine off.
"We get there, get off the bus and we're kind of rushed, it's rainy and cold and then we really didn't have the pop in our step like we normally do and I know the guys felt a little bit frustrated by that at the start."
The lack of pop in their step resulted in a mere 7-0 lead that lasted until the fourth quarter when the Raiders offence finally came alive, scoring three fourth quarter touchdowns, two by Kais and one by Bymak. Two extra points and a two point conversion by Alex Popoff on the fourth quarter touchdowns rounded out the Raiders scoring, giving them a 29-0 victory to improve their 2014 MJHSFL record to 2-0.
But while the offence lacked its usual pop for much of the game, the defence more than made up for it.
Defensive lineman Kolby Lang led the Viking slaughter registering three sacks in the game while linebacker Jon Muir also played well, helping stop the Vanier run game all day long. In fact, the entire front seven played great on defence; something Sharpe said is expected of them, but is still nice to see. "Our front seven were after their quarterback all game long," mentioned Sharpe. "They had something like 70 yards total offence and 23 rushing attempts for 24 yards.
"They couldn't get much going against those boys."
Next action
The YRHS Raiders senior football team (2-0) will have a bye week and will not play again until Saturday, September 27 when they visit the Weyburn Eagles (1-1) for a 2:00p.m. contest.
The next home action for the YRHS Raiders will be Friday, October 3 when they host the A.E. Peacock Tornadoes in the Friday Night Lights game.
