The Bear Creek Kodiaks broke open a senior high school football game with two second-half touchdowns to defeat the Eastview Wildcats, 18-0, Friday afternoon.
It was the first Simcoe County Athletic Association (SCAA) game for each Barrie team this season.
Kodiaks head coach Keith Jackson said both teams were rusty, as the scoreless halftime result showed.
“It was just about getting back in the groove,” he told BarrieToday of the final score. “There was a lot of just figuring out stuff, first game of the year. The first half was slow. We finally started putting things together, recognizing the mistakes we were making.”
David Wiwchar, Eastview's head coach, said his Wildcats gave Bear Creek a good fight.
“It was a good battle,” he said. “The guys, they hung in there right until the end. You know, it was 4-0 until two minutes left. It was a defensive battle. We’ve got some athletes and they showed up.
“The (Eastview) defence was holding strong all game long. We’ve just got to get the ball rolling on offence,” Wiwchar added. “We’re going to come together. We’re right there.”
The first half, before a couple of hundred fans on a sunny, cloudy and humid afternoon, was largely uneventful.
The highlight was a leaping interception by Eastview’s Markus Williams, who picked off Bear Creek quarterback Jake Ellen with just less than three minutes left in the half, but nothing came of the play and the second quarter ended scoreless.
Eastview got the ball to begin the second half, but made no headway and punted it away, only to have the Kodiaks' Rylar Varcoe return it to the Wildcats’ 25-yard line.
Bear Creek’s offence also sputtered until Erfan Zamani kicked a 13-yard field goal to give the home team a 3-0 lead. His single point made it 4-0 with 47 seconds left in the third quarter.
The Kodiaks survived a high snap to their punter and some good running by the Wildcats to stay ahead until Zamani, playing half-back, swept left and looked trapped by the Eastview defence late in the fourth quarter.
“He grabbed my shoulder pad and I just did what I felt I should do, so I spun and then I saw the gap there and I took it,” the 16-year-old said of his first touchdown.
There was 2:11 left in the game when Bear Creek went up 11-0.
Zamani also scored the Kodiaks' second touchdown, again on the ground.
The Kodiaks come into the season as senior Georgian Bay champions, after defeating rival St. Joan of Arc last November. The Kodiaks also went on to win their OFSAA Bowl game in Windsor, with a season-ending shutout win over North York's Chaminade Gryphons.
Bear Creek has been senior SCAA champions for the last three seasons.
“We came off a really successful season last year. There’s a mark on our back,” Jackson said. “At the same time, it’s a new team, new bodies, we’ve just got to get back to working our systems.”
After playing all of their games on the road last season, Bear Creek returned to their home field Friday, which was reconstructed and had a new sprinkler system installed last year.
Both the SCAA and Catholic School Athletics of Simcoe County (CSASC) will play six-week regular-season football schedules.
