麻豆传媒

The Yorkton Regional High School Raider Gridders will be defending their league championship Saturday.

The Raiders advanced to the Moose Jaw High School Athletics Association League final with a win on their home field this past Saturday where they defeated Moose Jaw Peacock 35-8.

Raider head coach Roby Sharpe said Peacock proved pesky in the semi-final.

鈥淲e played them in the regular season and beat them pretty handily,鈥� he said.

But the playoffs are a different thing, and through the first half Peacock stayed close.

鈥淲ith 30-seconds left (in the half) it was just 7-0,鈥� said Sharpe.

The Raiders had chances early, but yellow nylon on the grass proved a problem for the home team.

鈥淲e probably had 15 flags (against the Raiders),鈥� said Sharpe. 鈥淚t was hard to get into a flow.鈥�

Those flags even took points off the board at times. Yorkton had a 40-yard scoring play 鈥渢hat was called back because of holding,鈥� said Sharpe.

Yorkton would score in the final 30 seconds of the half to open up a 14-0 lead and that seemed to spark the Raiders.

Sharpe said it was a case of his team coming off a bye week and a couple of weaker team wins at season鈥檚 end that seemed to have had them a step out of sync.

鈥淲e hadn鈥檛 been in a really tough game of football for weeks. We had to knock some rust off of our blades,鈥� he said.

With the lead, Sharpe said at half time he just worked on getting his team refocused.

鈥淚 told them it was one of our worst halves of football we had played all year,鈥� he said, adding he challenged them to put their best half on the board the rest of the way.

While Sharpe said the Raiders 鈥減layed well鈥� the rest of the way, if not their best of the season, as they rolled up the 35-8 win, with Moose Jaw getting their major on a Hail Mary pass on the final play of the game.

The Raider win advances them to the final against Moose Jaw Central, a team they beat in the regular season. However, even though Yorkton topped the league through the regular season and defeated Central, the final Saturday will be played in Moose Jaw. Sharpe said they had thought the rules changed to have the top ranked team host, but they have learned that is not the case, although the Raiders hosted in 2017 when they faced another non-Moose Jaw based team.

As for what to expect in the final, Sharpe said Central has a good quarterback and a couple of good receivers, but they will spend this week preparing a game plan based on game film.