Johnny Bright Park – The St. Albert Colts finished the season as the second-best Tier 4 peewee football team in Alberta.
The Capital District Minor Football Association champions lost Saturday’s provincial final 50-22 to the Stettler Panthers.
Bryn Karch, 12, was disappointed “a little bit but we still got silver,” he said while showing off his medal after the post-game trophy presentation. “We went from the bottom of our division to Tier 4 (league) champions so we did good. I’m pretty happy.”
Quentin Bochar, head coach of the 3-7 Colts, was surprised by the result.
“The score was higher than I expected it to be,” Bochar said. “We had some brilliant moments and we had some non-brilliant moments, but that’s football. You take it as it goes.”
The Colts led 8-6 after the first quarter but trailed 26-16 at halftime and 32-16 after three quarters.
“We shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times,” Bochar said. “We had two plays where we were a player short and they scored two touchdowns. That hurt us a lot.”
The fifth annual Tier 4 peewee final kicked off with the Panthers scoring on their first series, a 14-yard touchdown run to cap off an 80-yard drive.
The Colts answered with a six-yard TD burst by Vincenzo Funaro and Karch’s two-point convert kick with 49 seconds left in the first quarter. Strong running by Ty Adolph, quarterback Adam Bochar and Funaro marched the Colts from inside their half of midfield into the endzone.
The Panthers drove the ensuing kickoff into scoring territory, but Hudson Stewart and Jacob Parent combined to stop the opposition on second and long and Pablo Rizzi-Benavides made a big play on third and long as Stettler turned the ball over on downs at the Colts three.
On second and eight, Bochar outran the Panthers down the left hash marks for a 105-yard TD with 8:05 to go before halftime. Karch split the uprights for two points to make it 16-6.
The Panthers replied with a pair of TDs only minutes apart, including a 59-yard catch and run for six points and the two-point convert kick cut the Colts’ lead to two points.
After scoring the go-ahead TD, the Panthers recovered a short kickoff and after two first downs and an unnecessary roughness flag on the Colts they punched the ball over the goal line from the one to lead by 10 with 2:04 left until the break.
In the third quarter the Panthers busted loose for a 31-yard TD run.
The Colts rallied with good yardage by Adolph before Funaro was stopped at the one with 2:16 left until quarter time.
In the fourth quarter the Panthers hit pay dirt with TD runs of 42 and 30 yards.
An interception by Rizzi-Benavides kept the Panthers from adding to their lead.
After a 30-yard TD run by the Panthers, Adolph turned a short pass from Bochar into a 61-yard TD with 4:10 on the clock.
The teams would exchange fumbles, with Branden Jackson of the Colts causing the Panthers turnover.
The last TD by the Panthers was 69 yards with 2:01 remaining.
“We played good we just had a little trouble on our containing. We plugged up the middle but they came around our line,” said Karch, a Grade 7 Georges H. Primeau student who lined up at receiver and cornerback. “We were quite evenly matched, they just had the upper hand on our containing. They got their bigger players to run to the outside.”
In the league’s Tier 3/4 division the Colts finished 1-6 before catching fire in the playoffs. They upset the St. Albert Riders 28-6 in the Tier 4 final for a berth at provincials. In the season opener the Riders (3-6) blanked the Colts 6-0.
The Panthers beat the Lloydminster Colts 26-12 for the right to play the Colts. There is no Tier 4 peewee division in southern Alberta.
“The boys deserved this. They finished eighth in their division, won the Tier 4 championship and then they came here and played against a fairly decent team. Both teams were pretty well evenly matched, we just helped them out a little bit,” said coach Bochar.
