The Bow Valley High School Bobcats are venturing into unknown territory this weekend.
Dropping a gritty 19-0 Rocky View Sports Association bronze-final football loss to host Springbank Phoenix on Oct. 25, the Bobcats are in Olds Nov. 1 for a regional 1A (Tier 4, school population 449 or less) qualifier against Olds High School Spartans. Starting the season at 2A (Tier 3, 450-749 students) the Spartans dropped to 1A earlier this season because the school’s population allowed for it.
“Don’t know anything about Olds. Never played them,” Bobcats offensive coordinator Harv Davis said after the Springbank game. “They supposedly have a pretty good running team. That’s all I know.”
Holding Springbank’s high-powered offence to 19 points, just six in the first half, Bow Valley’s defence is currently the team’s strength and should slow Olds down.
With plenty of skill and experience at key offensive spots – including quarterback Zach Kibzey, lineman Eddie Tingley, running backs Scott Haigh and Marshall van Iderstine, and receiver Grayson Javorsky – the Bobcats just need to work on the X’s and O’s. The pieces and parts are there on offence.
“It doesn’t help when our offence can’t put points on the board,” Haigh assessed. “We have to get more offence. Just execution.”
It’s something, Haigh says, is fixable.
“We will be ready,” the running back said. “We have a full week of practice to prepare and fix our mistakes.”
Bobcats head coach Scott Allard agrees with Haigh’s assessment.
“That’s one of the areas we need to work on this week,” Allard related of his team’s offensive power outage. “You’ve got good receivers, you’ve got a good quarterback, you’ve got good running backs. It’s like looking at the pros sometimes, right? You can’t figure out just why things aren’t matching up. They look good in practice. It comes down to execution.
“The talent is there.”
