Colts will wear pink in home finale

The Swift Current Comp. Colts are eagerly anticipating their final home game of the Moose Jaw High School Football League regular season next week.

The Colts will wear pink equipment during their regular season finale against the visiting Estevan Elecs on Tuesday at 4 p.m. at Colts Field. They will also be donating the admission proceeds to cancer research and selling limited edition Colts t-shirts to raise funds as well.

“We have been thinking about it for the last couple of years. When we played in Brooks they had done it in October to kind of mimic what the CFL and NFL teams do every October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month,” explained head coach Derek Murdoch.

Murdoch said that one of the team’s equipment suppliers had sent out some information about what type of pink gear was available.

“We just decided to go for it and the guys were all over it, thought it was a great idea.”

“We kind of talk about being good citizens in our building and we kind of thought it would be nice to extend that a little bit and look at the bigger picture. The guys are buying in and it will be kind of nice to wear pink in that last home game.”

Before they don they pink gear though, they will travel to Weyburn to face the Eagles in search of a win.

“That’s not an easy place to play, we were there in the playoffs last year. They have two really good ath- letes at running back that kind of just got onto their team this year, the Williams boys, they are very good athletes. They are not overpowering, they just run hard.”

Murdoch said the Eagles keep things simple.

“If we can hold on and make some tackles we will be alright. They are not very dynamic, they don’t throw a lot at you, they just do little things and they do them well. We are hoping that we can get a few stops and offensively we feel like we should be able to move the ball.”

The Colts are coming off a loss to Moose Jaw AE Peacock but they were encouraged to score 34 points against the league’s frontrunners.

“Obviously we were really happy. 450 yards is nothing to sneeze at. I was happy offensively in the first half. We had their defense on their heels in the first quarter. We were moving the ball and they were kind of scrambling to adjust to what we were doing,” said Murdoch.

The Colts trailed 49-6 at halftime and a league rule helped even things up in the second half as both teams got some other players onto the field.

“Peacock is a really good program with lots of character and they got their young guys in. When our guys were matched up with their guys the same age and same experience we did just fine. It was encouraging to see our guys have some success. We got the ball spread around and we got everybody into the game. If you forget what the scoreboard said at the end of the game it was a positive finish for us.”

The Colts are hoping they can win their final two games and possibly earn a home playoff date at Colts Field.

“There is still that chance and we would love to be able to do that. But for sure it is the last regular season home game for five of our guys and a guy like Grady [Lamontagne] it is his last game for a fouryear guy, so kind of a big day for those guys,” said Murdoch.

The Colts are riding a three-game losing streak after opening the season with a win over Moose Jaw Vanier before losses to Moose Jaw Central, Yorkton and Peacock.

“We knew going in looking at the schedule that the middle part was going to be the toughest part. We came out of it fairly injury free and our guys are upbeat and know that we have two games now that we really want to get after.”

The Colts had 13 days in between games to prepare for Weyburn.

“We look at these two games as games that we want to get after and win. We have some wrinkles offensively and probably we will make some personnel moves probably too.

We want to go to Weyburn and have a good game. But we want to save a few things for that game against Estevan on the 15th because that is a big game for our team.”

The Moose Jaw League playoff system will see the first team get a bye. The second team will host the seventh team, the thirdplace team will host the sixth-place team, while the fourth and fifth-place teams will meet up in the quarter-finals.