Rams’ Moortgat has the gift of grab
Kyle Moortgat’s first touchdown with the University of Regina Rams turned his world upside down.
Moortgat, a third-year member of the Canada West football team, performed a celebratory backflip after making a spectacular touchdown catch Friday during a 36-20 victory over the UBC Thunderbirds at Mosaic Stadium.
“That’s probably only the third time I’ve ever tried a backflip,” Moortgat said. “I just thought I’d go for it and it worked out.
“I was thinking about celebrations all the time. I thought that maybe one day I would try it. Then I tried it one day in practice and I hit it, so then I thought about doing it in a game for my first touchdown ever.”
And sure enough ...
Moortgat caught the first of Noah Picton’s two touchdown passes on Friday, registering a 28yard major.
“It was a great throw,” Moortgat said. “I just had to go up and get it.”
He battled for the football with the Thunderbirds’ Stavros Katsantonis, who appeared to make an interception in the end zone.
“He had a good grasp on it, so I just knew that I had to pull it down harder,” Moortgat said. “At the end, I had it. When we hit the ground, I pulled it out of his arms and then I had it right then and there.”
Initially, Picton thought he had been intercepted.
“For a second, I did,” the Rams’ star quarterback said. “Stavros is a really good player. He’s rangy, he covers a lot of field and he has good ball skills, so I wasn’t really sure. Then I saw Morty come up with it and it was kind of a sigh of relief that he made the play.”
That said, Picton wasn’t surprised.
“I saw the corner jump the out (pattern) and I saw Kyle running free, so I put it to a spot,” the fivefoot-nine Picton recalled. “For me, personally, I don’t always see the receivers, so I kind of chuck and pray sometimes. The safety made a good play, but Kyle just made a better one. He’s a big, tall receiver. We expect him to get those 50-50 balls and he did just that.”
Then came the backflip, on which the landing was a little unsteady.
“I was a little excited, so I didn’t turn very much,” Moortgat said with a smile. “It still worked out.”
Moortgat finished the game with three receptions for 53 yards. The yardage total equalled his production for his first two seasons with the Rams.
The six-foot, 180-pound slotback registered one catch for eight yards as a rookie in 2015 before making three grabs for 45 yards last year. He seized an opportunity to assume a larger role in 2017, as evidenced by the icebreaking touchdown.
“It meant a lot,” said Moortgat, who hails from Cochrane, Alta. “It has been a long time waiting for that. It meant the world to get that one. The way it happened just made me feel even better about it.”
The Rams (1-0) return to action on Friday against the host University of Calgary Dinos.
Calgary sits third in the weekly U Sports football rankings, which were released Wednesday. Regina is fifth.