Hayes wants to keep it ‘special’
Jason Hayes wants his players to know it’s special. This team, this season, this success.
“You don’t have these seasons all the time, so let’s take advantage of it as much as we can and keep working hard,” he said. “We preach it. It’s like, guys, just put in the work. The talent is there.”
Hayes and his Hamilton Hurricanes host the Windsor Fratmen at Tim Hortons Field on Sunday with the Ontario Football Conference title on the line. Hayes, their longtime head coach, said you can never count Windsor out.
“They’re not going to go, ‘Oh, we’re 6-2, we’re huge underdogs.’ They’re going to come at us,” he said. “The record doesn’t matter come Sunday. We’ve beat them in the title as the favourite, we’ve beat them in the title as the underdog and they’ve done it to us, too.”
The Hurricanes have won the provincial final three times with Hayes at the helm — in
2010, 2011 and 2016. This time it’s different, though.
“We’ve had some first place finishes, but we’ve never been undefeated,” Hayes said. “It would be nice to kind of close the deal on Sunday and win that, be 10-0 and give ourselves the chance to go and see how competitive we are out west.”
The winner of the 4 p.m. game moves on to play the top team from the B.C. Conference for a berth in the Canadian Bowl in mid-November. The winner of the Prairie Conference is hosting. In the past 20 years, a team from the Ontario Conference has only won the national championship once.
“We know Ontario has historically been a 35-point underdog versus every opponent out there for the last two decades, but we like our team and, while we don’t want to look ahead, we want to give ourselves a chance to go out there and play a B.C. team or a Saskatoon team and see where we stand this year,” Hayes added.
The Hurricanes advanced to provincial final with a 49-0 win against the GTA Grizzlies last weekend.
Hayes said the team’s defensive success is nothing new. Offensively, though, it has made gains,
behind quarterback Jake Marquette, who this week was named the conference’s outstanding offensive player.
“We are really explosive in all aspects of the offence,” he said. “We think we have the premier player in the country with Jake being at quarterback, his third year with me, and we have a number of good receivers, a great running game and great O-line. It’s nice that it’s gelling.”
The Fratmen punched their ticket to the final with a 46-0 win against the London Beefeaters. The Fratmen had a conferencehigh 2,090 passing yards in eight regular-season games, along with 22 touchdowns.
“We’re going to have to be ready for that, because they have five or six athletes that can score in a blink and we’re going to have to be prepared,” said Hayes. “Over the years, they’ve been a bit more of a physical, running team, but they got away from that this year with the talent they have, so that’s kind of a switch.”
The Hurricanes won both of their previous meetings with the Fratmen this fall — 51-12 and 20-12, respectively. Those are also the only two losses Windsor has suffered going into the game, which gets started at 4 p.m.
Notes: The Hurricanes dominated the major conference awards, winning in six of the nine categories. In addition to Marquette, Hayes was named coach of the year, Kyle Maertends outstanding offensive lineman, Tom Zarafonaitis outstanding defensive lineman, Keyshaun Jordan offensive rookie of the year and Zachary Hoffner outstanding defensive player of the year.