Statement Game

www.krammag.com
Jonas Emilsson

You can’t hit what you can’t catch.

That message reverberated throughout the Sr. Boys Division 1 league loud and clear on Monday night as the Notre Dame Pride rolled to a comfortable 52-7 victory of the Centennial Coyotes.
Notre Dame vs Centennial.

Along with the convincing victory, the Pride also sent a loud message to the rest of league – This team not only belongs, they may be the early favourites.

Of course any logical person will say that you can’t judge a season by just one game, but the total package football that Notre Dame displayed against a solid Centennial team will surely raise a few eyebrows.

The most impressive piece of the total package is the Pride’s team speed, especially on the offensive side of the football.

It was evident early on that the Coyotes were struggling to contain the Pride’s two speedy running backs, Chris Lazo and Ryan George.

Lazo opened the scoring just three minutes into the game with a 26-yard run down the left side. He followed that up just over two minutes later with an even more impressive 40 yard run down the same side.

George followed Lazo’s major with an impressive kick return to put the pride ahead 21-0.

After sticking to the ground game for a majority of the opening quarter, quarterback Jeremy Long decided to air things out, launching a deft pass into the end zone for his team’s fourth major.

To close out the opening frame, the Pride showed off their defensive speed after they intercepted an errant pass at midfield, returning the ball all the way to end zone to make the score 35-0.

That’s all it took for the Pride to introduce themselves to the rest of the league – one quarter of play.

The Coyotes slowly started to regain their composure for the remainder of the game, finding ways to slow down the Pride’s speed. But the disastrous first quarter sealed their fate.

The final score surprised Pride head coach Dave Diluzio, who knows that his team will face plenty of challenges throughout the season, especially now that the cat is out of the bag.

“We were just lucky to make some plays early but then the momentum started to slide,” said Diluzio after the game. “We’re not 45 points better than Centennial.”

But they are for real, something all players and coaches were eager to find out considering this is their first year in Division 1.

But proving that they belong is not something Diluzio feels is necessary.

“You know what, we just want to play,” said the coach. “We know that the quality of football in division 1 is tremendous and every week you’re playing against great players and great coaches. We just want to do the best we can.”

Based on their season opening game, it’s clear that the Pride will be relying on their speed to win games this season.

And considering they’re not the biggest team in the league, being able to find open space to run will be key for them.

“We’re definitely a power running team and we want to use that to set up everything else,” said Diluzio. “We would like our identity to be that power running style.”

Since Monday’s game was a makeup game after the rain put a damper of last Friday’s season opener, the Pride will have a short week to prepare for their next opponents, the Bowness Trojans.

“We are going have our hands full,” says Diluzio. “They have some greats back and we will definitely have our hands full over the next couple of days trying to figure out how to play them.”

Check out Kram Interactive for more game photos. Remeber, you can also post your photos, videos and blogs about how your team performed.