Mission coach doesn’t want repeat of Double- A semifinal in title game against Barsby

It will be difficult to top last Saturday’s Mission- Ballenas Double- A high school football semifinal for scoring, spectacular runs and drama. But Mission Roadrunners coach Danny Jakobs is not so sure he could handle a repeat in this Saturday’s Subway Bowl Final at BC Place Stadium against another mid- Vancouver Island school in Nanaimo’s John Barsby Bulldogs. “That was the craziest game I’ve ever been involved in in 30 years of coaching,” Jakobs said of his school’s 62- 61 overtime win over Ballenas of Parksville. “I don’t know if I could go through that again.” Ballenas got 442 rushing yards on 59 carries and eight touchdowns from running back Coltin LaPlante. But Mission secured the win when quarterback Jesse Walker, who rushed for eight touchdowns and registered 338 yards on 24 carries, scored on a controversial two- point convert in overtime. Jakobs had let his team captains make the gutsy call to go for two. On the play, Walker’s right knee appeared to touch ground in the slippery backfield at UBC’s snow- dusted Thunderbird Stadium, but no whistle was blown and Walker made it into the end zone. Video shot by a Ballenas alum and now up on the Parksville Qualicum Beach News website does appear to show Walker’s knee touch ground. The school is seeking an apology from B. C. High School Football for the alleged officiating error, but, as of Wednesday, neither the school, nor the paper, had received a response from the association. Barsby, the 2010 and 2013 Double- A champions and 10- 1 this season, advanced to Saturday’s final with a 34- 16 win over Vernon. Mission, 9- 3 with two of the losses coming in exhibition games against Triple- A teams, won the title in 2011, beating the Bulldogs 16- 12 and snapping Barsby’s 23- game win streak. So the two schools are well acquainted with each other. “We’re in for a very tough game,” says Jakobs. “Five games ago they went back to more of the double- wing offence they’ve had for years and with all the misdirection and faking, it’s hard to find the ball.” But despite a renewed commitment to the run, Barsby quarterback North Rainey was still the second- leading passer in Double- A with 1,617 yards and 18 touchdowns. “If we run the ball hard, then it will open up our pass game,” Rainey told the Nanaimo News Bulletin this week. “We’ve just got to do what we’ve done every other week to win.” Walker, meantime, completed just 34 per cent of his 92 passes for 531 yards and six touchdowns. But the speedy and elusive quarterback rushed for 1,986 in 12 games and an average of 10.75 yards a carry. “We’re playing a man,” Barsby head coach Rob Stevenson said of the Mission standout. “Once we get our hands on him, we’ve got to hang on and we’ve got to get help in there fast.” Says Barsby linebacker Tyler Hill: “If we shut him down, we shut down Mission.”