Take That!
Lloydminster Comp Hangs 42-0 Loss on Vortex
Daryl Martin-Breault
Staff Reporter
The Vegreville Vortex hosted Lloydminster Composite for their home opener on Friday. The day was complete with a tailgate party hosted by Blue Sky’s before the game, live entertainment, mascot races at halftime and a giveaway of a signed Edmonton Eskimos football and a 55” flat screen TV from the Brick. Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite so on the field as Lloyd Comp hung 42 on the Vortex for a final score of 42-0.
Friday marked the home opener of the Vegreville Vortex Football Club. With nearly 200 people on the sideline watching, a tailgate party, live entertainment, mascot races and more happening before, during and after the game, the Vortex hoped to put on a good show for their new fans. Lloydminster Composite was happy to play spoiler.
Fielding enough players to have two teams and looking like a semi-pro squad, Lloyd knocked the smaller, younger Vortex around for 48 minutes on their way to crushing 42-0 victory.
Head Coach Colby Coers doesn’t think the festivities and huge crowd had anything to do with his team’s play, “I don’t think they were nervous with all the people there, I think they liked having people out watching them.”
The Vortex kept Lloyd in check for the most part in the first quarter, holding Lloyd to an 8-0 lead. But the city boys broke things open in the second, dropping 4 TD on an overwhelmed Vortex defense. The game went to halftime with Lloyd up 36-0. Coers pointed to “poor tackling and dumb mistakes” as key culprits for the awful quarter.
From there, the Vortex buckled down, possibly realizing that they can actually play on the same field as the boys from Lloyd.
Lloyd managed two more field goals in the second half of the game, making the final score 42-0, but it could have been much worse. The defense really picked things up after halftime and save for that bad quarter, the entire game might have gone much differently.
Unfortunately, the Vortex are plagued once again with not having enough players. Too many players are forced to play both ways, wearing them down late in the game. Coers says this is something that puts the team behind the eight ball from the opening kick-off.
“With the offence, everything starts with our lineman,” says Coers. “Their starting [defensive line] just out worked our line. Their [defensive line] had the advantage from the beginning, when their offence was on, the [defensive line] was off; our linemen have to play both ways.”
One of the biggest positives for the early part of the year has been injuries, or the lack thereof. In previous years it was a conga line to the trainer’s table but this year the coaching staff has helped to cut that down significantly. For a team that lacks bodies, keeping players healthy is vitally important.
“The injuries to players have been a lot less [this year]. Our first game [we had] no injuries, [and the] last game [we had] 2, none serious. The reason for that [is that] we train harder and have rules in place that help.”
Overall Coers says he is pleased with the teams play despite the score, “Overall our team is improving, I’m happy with how they worked, we just need to work on simply stuff like tackling and we will be fine.”
The Vortex have opened their season 0-2 and this coming Friday will host Lac La Biche for an exhibition game before heading to Wainwright on October 1.
Coers is in Mexico this week receiving medical treatment not available in Canada or the U.S. for persons suffering from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The thoughts and prayers of the whole community are with Colby during this time.
