OLDS — The bantam Bulldogs will play in their first-ever league championship football game this Saturday after hammering the Drumheller Titans 59-18 in the semifinal in Olds on Oct. 22.
In this Saturday's final, the Bulldogs will host the Ponoka bantam Broncs. Game time is 2 p.m.
Also this Saturday, the peewee Huskies will host the Rocky Junior Rebels in their league semifinal. Kickoff in that game is slated for 11 a.m.
The Oct. 22 game was played despite a few inches of snow lying on the ground. Volunteers spent a couple of hours setting up for the game, including shovelling snow off the Normie Kwong field.
The Titans scored first, but Olds came back, especially in the second quarter and onward.
“Knowing your opponent is key,” Bulldogs head coach Dennis Yurchevich wrote in an email.
“We took the experience that we had from playing them in Drumheller a few weeks back, as well as the changing weather conditions, and we made some essential changes to our game plan in practice.
“Offensively, we focused primarily on the running game until the field conditions started to improve and then integrated our generally successful passing game as well.”
The Bulldogs made changes defensively as well.
“We adjusted our depth chart to shuffle players around into different positions, as well as worked on pursuit and tackling drills in practice.
With the change in the weather, we changed our play-calling as well to focus on more short-yardage plays and their run game,” he added.
It all paid off.
They even got an interception and ran it back for a TD.
Yurchevich was also pleased with the play of the Bulldogs special teams.
“Our kicker and punter played a very strong game, not only pinning Drumheller deep when we kicked, but adding essential points to the board in the point-after attempts.
“Knowing that we are in the playoffs and that we were playing for the chance to be in our first-ever league final gave our players that much more drive and determination to go out there and give it their all,” he wrote.
High school football game cancelled
Meanwhile, a high school football game between the Olds Spartans and Canmore, scheduled to be played Oct. 22 in Olds, was canceled, due to snow.
Spartans head coach Kent Lorenz says it will not be rescheduled.
However, the Spartans were slated to play a game in High River Wednesday, Oct. 26.
