CANMORE – There hasn't been any home field advantange so far this season for the Canmore Wolverines, but luckily for the high school football team, a trip out of the mountains is coming.
The high school football club dropped to 0-2 after losing 14-12 to arch rival, the Drumheller Titans, in a game that came down to the final play on Monday night (Sept. 9) at Canmore’s Millennium Field.
It’s the second straight loss for the Wolverines to start the 2019 season after suffering a 38-2 pounding against the Ardrossan Bisons in Aug. 29’s home opener.
Wolverines head coach, Spencer Rose, said inexperience has played a factor in the team’s early season struggles, where just one touchdown has been scored in two games.
“We got a lot of new kids that haven’t played a lot of football before, so it’s gonna be playing them more and hopefully we get an opportunity to pull some of our guys off playing both ways because we’re putting a lot on a lot of guys right now,” Rose said.
Josh Ellis scored the Wolverines’ lone touchdown against the Titans and Diego Perez de Camino kicked a field goal in the loss.
On a night where the Wolverines could have used all the points they could get, two of the team's touchdowns got called back due to penalties.
Rose said the Wolverines had a “serious discipline issue” on Monday, which he’s going to have to address at practice.
“We’ve got to be way smarter … there were several areas where we had opportunities that we didn’t capitalize on,” Rose said. “We marched our way into field goal range towards the end of the third quarter and we walked ourselves out with 15 straight yards of penalties … and then you saw kind of it at the end with another discipline issue with guys throwing their helmets [and] guys punting balls, so it is what it is.”
Monday’s game slipped away from the Wolverines in the final minute. The Wolverines were up 12-8 after opting to give its rival a two-point safety to push the ball down field for a punt. But the ensuing kick and return turned disastrous for the home club when a Titan blew past everyone for a 70-yard touchdown.
With less than 30 seconds remaining, the Wolverines couldn’t push the ball down field enough to get in range for a field goal attempt.
The 2018 provincial champions will look to find its championship form this Saturday (Sept. 14) when the team marches into Olds to battle the Spartans in search of its first victory. Kick off is at 3:30 p.m.
