Wildcats Get Horse Collared in Calgary
The Edmonton Wildcats, coming off a bye week suffer their third defeat in as many games at the hands of the Calgary Colts by a score of 40-30 in front of approximately 800 fans.
The weekends contest pitted 2 teams who wanted to atone for tough losses inflicted on them prior to the bye week. The Wildcats, who dropped a 27-13 decision to the Saskatoon Hilltops at home, while the Colts took a 59-10 shellacking from the Regina Thunder at Mosaic Stadium.
The Colts would jump out to a 10-0 first quarter lead, compliments of an Andrew Fabian 46-yard field goal a little over 5 minutes in. Doug Long would field a Donovan Kavich punt and return it 72 yards for the first touchdown of the day nearly 90 seconds later.
Edmonton would get on the board in the first minute of the middle frame as Adam Senuik found Mitch Richter for a 26-yard major to pull to within 3 at 10-7.
The home side would restore their 10-point edge halfway through the quarter as Jeremy Long fired a 4-yard pass to Ryan McDermit for his first of two majors on the afternoon.
The game would take a 180-degree swing in the final 3 minutes of the half as Wildcat DB David Berg would pick off a Long pass and run it back 28 yards for a touchdown to cut the Calgary lead to 17-14. Andrew Johnson would put the visitors in front with 1:05 remaining with a 13-yard TD grab to make it 20-17. The convert though, was blocked.
Clayton Masikewich would relieve Long at pivot and score two majors of his own in the 3rd quarter on 1-yard sneaks. The point-after on the 2nd Masikewich TD was blocked, but the Colts again had a 10-point lead, 30-20. Fabian would be good on a 38-yard field goal try with 45 seconds left in the quarter to up the Colt advantage to 33-20.
Kavich would pot his second field-goal from 26 yards out at the 2:19 mark, but the Colts would put the game on ice as Masikewich found McDermit for a 40-yard touchdown toss with a little over 5 minutes left.
Wildcat receiver Jerit Lambert would close out the scoring with a 22-yard pass from Senuik with 2:15 remaining to make the final 40-30.
The Wildcats had a strong outing on defense holding the Colts to 122 total rushing yards and picking the ball off 3 times with solid efforts by DB’s David Berg, Miguel Barker and Kael Schryver. Linebacker Kevin Hanson had a good day as well leading the team with 7 tackles for 16 points while Mike Podloski and Delano Tennant each had 4 tackles and a QB sack for 12 points on the day.
The Wildcats put up 232 yds of net offense with Adam Senuik completing 11 of 33 for 159 yds and 3 TD’s while the ground game without injured running back Justin McEvoy was non existent picking up only 96 total rushing yds on the day. Running Back Shiane Runcie had a tuff day only managing 21yds on 7 carries while QB Adam Senuik rushed for 42 yds on 6 carries. The Colts had 314 yds of net offense with Jeremy Long completing 6 of 13 for 104 yds, 3 interceptions and 1 TD, while back up QB Clayton Masikewich completed 5 of 7 for 117 yds and 1 TD. The Hilltops running game racked up 122 yds with Chucks Okafor picking up the bulk of the yardage with 69yds on 15 carries.
Next game sees the Wildcats hit the road again heading East to face the 2 -1 Winnipeg Rifles at Winnipeg’s Canad Inn Stadium on Sunday September 19th at Noon.
All Edmonton Wildcat practices are at Rundle Park and the players take to the field at around 7:30 pm nightly.
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Stuart Gibson
Edmonton Wildcats Media Coordinator
media@edmontonwildcats.com
Phone (780) 221-3671
www.edmontonwildcats.com