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Team that overcame death of teammates loses game

The season is finally over for an Alberta high school football team which overcame the loss of four players to advance to the playoffs for a provincial championship.

EDMONTON — The season is finally over for an Alberta high school football team which overcame the loss of four players to advance to the playoffs for a provincial championship.

The Grande Prairie Warriors lost 49-0 on Saturday in a quarter-final game against the Bev Facey Falcons, a team from Sherwood Park, east of Edmonton.

Four of the Warriors were killed last month when a suspected drunk driver in a pickup truck slammed into their car.

A fifth player who was in the car remains in hospital.

The Warriors won their league semifinal just seven days after the tragedy, and then advanced to Saturday’s game in Edmonton by taking their league championship last weekend.

The Warriors will still be guests of the Edmonton Eskimos on Sunday when Edmonton hosts the Calgary Stampeders in the CFL’s West Division semifinal.

The high school team is staying at a hotel as guests of the Eskimos, and will be at Sunday’s CFL game.

Walter Borden-Wilkins, 15, Matthew Deller, 16, Tanner Hildebrand, 15, and Vincent Stover, 16, were all killed in the highway collision near Grande Prairie, in northwestern Alberta, on Oct. 22.

The pickup truck driver, a 21-year-old man, faces 11 charges, including some for impaired driving and fleeing the scene of an accident.