Bad gas.
Not something you want to run your team on, particularly in playoff game against the Springbank Community High School Phoenix.
So when Foothills Composite High School Falcons football head coach Greg McLeod went for it on 3rd-and-8 from his own 41-yard line in the game’s final two minutes, sideline observers were left scratching their heads. And when his team turned the ball over on downs on that play, and Phoenix quarterback Levi Jackson immediately knifed a 41-yard touchdown pass to Adel Boussenane for the win, even McLeod had to admit he goofed.
“That was a total brain fart, that was an absolute bonehead call that I’m going to regret for a long time.”
The late score was the difference in Springbank’s 17-10 win over the Falcons in Alberta South Central Zone Tier 2 high school playoff play Nov. 3 at Calgary’s Shouldice Park.
The kicker is, McLeod’s counterpart, Phoenix head coach Tony Lucas, made the same call in the third quarter, albeit with his team in Foothills territory. Down 3-0, Lucas gambled on 3rd-and-14. Jackson gunned the ball on a quick crossing play to Kevin Natenstedt who then scampered 41 yards for the major to make it 7-3 Springbank.
That call can make you look like a genius or a heel. It just happened to Lucas’s way this time.
“We thought we saw something we could exploit,” Lucas said of his success on the same call that burned McLeod. This was the second game in their last three Springbank’s cardiac kids produced the game’s defining score in the waning minutes.
“That’s what we’re all about,” enthused Phoenix quarterback Levi Jackson, who took some punishing shots from a swarming Falcons defence but continued to stand in and fire the ball down field. “They brought a lot of pressure, but our O-line did a good job and we just withstood the pressure. It’s awesome.
“We’re the air show. So that’s what we do.”
The Phoenix now host the Hunting Hills Lightning of Red Deer in the Tier 2 South Region semifinal, Nov. 10.
– Files from Remy Greer, Okotoks Western Wheel
