Dominate (verb): To control, govern or rule by superior authority or power.
Look it up in the dictionary this fall and you’ll see a photo of the Cochrane Lions peewee football team beside the definition.
The Lions opened the Calgary Peewee Football (CPFA) regular season with a 58-8 win Aug. 29 over the Airdrie Storm at Calgary’s Shouldice Park. It should be noted the score-keeper couldn’t keep pace with the Lions, as the field scoreboard read 38-8 at game’s end.
The Lions dominated on both sides of the ball.
“We passed. We ran inside,” said peewee Lions head coach Paul Vaillancourt following the game. “We ran outside. And our defence played great, too.”
Unlike other Cochrane-area football programs that are still leaving the door open for more players to join, the peewee Lions have more than 40 players available to dress on game nights.
“We’ve got a full roster,” Vaillancourt stated.
The Lions started their season-opening tilt against Airdrie by handing the ball off to Dawson Gladue, Kyle Martin and Dylan Neis. From there, Vaillancourt opened up the playbook and put quarterback Xavier Vaillancourt and the rest of the offence to work.
“We like to establish our off-tackle plays because it sets up our play-action passing,” coach Vaillancourt said. “We did that early. After we did that, we started running outside. And that worked for us. And then we started running inside in the second half. I think we went up the gut three or four times right off the bat in the second half.”
The kind of success the team is having ensures everyone plays.
“We got all our players in. We really tried to keep it fair, and it worked out for us.”
The peewee Lions tackle the Calgary Falcons Sept. 8 at Shouldice Park in Calgary, 2:30 p.m. kickoff.
