Look for Steve Milton’s game report
There’s one more chance for a Hamilton football team to win a game in Ottawa this year.
St. Thomas More Knights advanced to next week’s OFSAA Bowls Festival series with a 20-9 victory over archrival Cardinal Newman Cardinals on Tuesday afternoon in the GHAC (Golden Horseshoe) football championship on the Knights’ home field.
It was the third time this season, and second time in 10 days, that the Knights had beaten the Cardinals. They had won the city Catholic final 17-7 — the eighth time one of the two had won the league crown.
But both teams knew they’d each likely beat their Halton opponents and tangle again for the Golden Horseshoe crown.
As they did in the league final, Newman looked powerful early, marching deep into the red zone behind quarterback Daniel Eldridge on their first two drives. But sturdy backs-to-the-wall defence by the Knights held them to a pair of field goals by Vince Triumbari, who scored all of the Cardinals points on the afternoon.
“That was huge,” said St. Thomas More coach Claudio Silvestri. “They were coming out firing like they did in the league championship game, and we knew they would do that. We hung tough. The defence held it together for us over the first two drives until the offence got going.”
Which the Knights did on their first offensive play after the first of Kobi Ofuokwu’s two game-altering interceptions.
Isaiah Parkinson, part of a flexible, four-deep Knights’ backfield, made a terrific 30-yard touchdown catch on a pass from imperturbable quarterback Evan Hillock. That gave St. Thomas a 7-6 lead, and they never trailed thereafter.
“Isaiah is a heckuva player, last week he had four TDs (against Burlington Nelson),” Hillock said. “He got us back in it.
“We’ve got four backs who can push it and we’ve got an O line that moves. We have a lot of great players on this team.”
Which would include Ofuokwu who, like his quarterback, is in Grade 12 and, also like his quarterback, plans to return to St. Thomas More next year.
“This is a great moment,” he said. “We’re trying to get to Ottawa so I had to make those plays. This is a great team, a great program.”
Josh Munoz scored the other Knights’ major while Dante Medeiros’s strong kicking leg accounted for eight points. The Knights’ three interceptions were critical factors in the ebb and flow of the game.
After two years at Tim Hortons Field, this year’s OFSAA Bowls Festival is at TD Place Stadium, where the Hamilton Tiger-Cats season was ended Sunday by the Ottawa Redblacks.
The Knights will face the Catholic Central Crusaders of London in the Western Bowl at 4 p.m. Monday. The Crusaders are ranked No. 3 in the country with the Knights No. 1, so this game will essentially determine which team will be regarded as the best 2018 Canadian high school team. The Knights finished last year ranked best in the nation by CanadaFootballChat.com.
More has won an OFSAA bowl game — each by a lopsided margin — in three straight years and last year both they and the Cardinals made it to the festival in Hamilton. But this region was allotted only one berth for the Ottawa festival.
“It was a dogfight,” Silvestri said of Tuesday’s win, fashioned amid a bitterly cold wind. “They always bring the best out of you. Our guys were resilient again. We go off to another slow start and had to come from behind, but I’m really proud of the way boys pulled together. It’s really difficult to beat a good team like Cardinal Newman three times in a year.”
Cardinals coach Lino Battilana, tipping his hat to the Knights, agreed with that assessment.
“I think we had a great culture, a great group of kids,” he said. “We worked hard today but it was just the turnovers. Three times in a season: that’s never easy.”