The Hunting Hills Lightning showed why they’re one of the best tier 2 high school football teams in the province on Thursday at MEGlobal Athletic Park.
They remained undefeated with their fifth straight city high school football win 48-21 over the Lacombe Rams and locked up first place in the process. The victory came behind a dominant first quarter when they found the endzone in three different ways.
Brandon Rees snuck the ball in for a touchdown early in the game, before the Lighting went with some trickery and recovered an onside kick while leading 7-0. From there, running back Luc Lukalu took over and finished another strong drive with a 15-yard touchdown run.
On a Rams punt on the ensuing offensive possession, Austin Schneider returned a punt 44 yards for a score to make it 21-0 Hunting Hills before the Rams were able to get rolling.
“We played really fast, our fastest most physical game of the season,” Lightning head coach Kyle Sedgwick said. “We focused on physicality and speed for the last couple weeks. I thought we played well, got a couple guys banged up, but we’re going to see how that goes. We made some steps in the right direction and ran the ball well, we tried to make an effort with that early on.”
Lacombe’s offense finally got a touchdown from quarterback Johnny Ericson in the second quarter but the early deficit was too much to overcome.
Rees scored on another run in the third quarter and was large and in charge all night long for the Lightning offence that ran like a well-oiled machine in the win.
The Rams did their best to battle back from the deep hole when they scored with an inventive halfback pass from Mitch Simmons Zach Schwab in the third quarter.
“We have to give credit to Lacombe, they have great athletes and a great quarterback and they played well today and they didn’t quit,” Sedgwick said.
Hunting Hills responded quickly with a 14-yard touchdown pass from Rees to Josh Patterson to make it 42-13.
The fight continued for the Rams early in the fourth quarter when Ericson found his favourite target Richard Jans for a 27-yard pitch and catch.
Hunting Hills will face off against Notre Dame next week on Thursday and the Rams will take on Lindsay Thurber.
“In high school football you don’t want to sit too many guys because you have first place. Everybody makes the playoffs and it comes down to those weeks, it’s win or go home. We’ve got to keep momentum going,” Sedgwick said.
Email sports tips to Byron Hackett
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