After a month’s worth of work against the best in the province it’s time to come home.
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights kick-off league play in the Big Rock Football Conference this week against the Highwood Mustangs after testing its mettle against some of the elite Tier II programs in a challenging month of exhibition play.
“It’s (important) to get off on the right foot with our league schedule because that’s the most important part of our schedule,” said Knights head coach Matthew Hassett. “The non-conference games are great to toughen up your schedule and I think we did that.”
It’s hard to argue with the level of competition. Three of the four matches thus far have pitted the Knights against teams ranked in the top-10 in their tier.
“We played probably two of the top three Tier II teams in the province,” the coach added. “We played good competition and I thought we got better each week. We’ve just got to keep doing that.”
HTA’s most recent outing might have been its best.
The Knights gave the defending provincial silver medallists, the St. Joseph’s Celtics out of Grande Prairie, all they could handle in a 26-10 loss on neutral ground at Edmonton’s Foote Field on Friday.
A much more complete performance for the Knights on the heels of somewhat disappointing showings against the Catholic Central Cougars and Medicine Hat High Mohawks.
“If we played our last two games as well as this one we would have won them both,” Hassett said. “I thought we took a huge step forward.
“A lot fewer penalties, really good intensity, the offence moved the ball. We just didn’t finish drives.”
Southpaw quarterback Cameron Fietz called his own number for a touchdown run while place kicker Aria Kabganian added a field-goal to round out the offensive production.
It could have been a much more fruitful afternoon for the Okotoks school.
On three separate occasions the team was within five yards from the end-zone and came up empty handed in the red-zone.
“That was the difference,” the coach said. “We score on those drives and it’s 31-26 for us.”
The Knights’ season long issues on special teams were addressed all week in practice and it showed on the field. Defensively the Knights stepped up to the challenge against a high-octane Celtics team before running out of steam in the fourth-quarter.
HTA returns to Knights field for the first time in three weeks on Sept. 23 when it takes on the Mustangs. Opening kick-off is 7 p.m.
