The St. Paul Lions dominated the Westlock Thunderbirds 48-6 during the club’s Sept. 15 home-opener.
The loss leaves the Thunderbirds 1-1 in the Wheatland Football League.
The Thunderbirds were down 14-6 after the first quarter and couldn’t crack the six-point mark. The Lions outran the club, leaping to a 29-point lead at halftime, and 42-6 score on the board at the end of the third.
Although he would have liked to see a different result, head coach Jon Kramer said the win came down to the more-prepared team.
“Part of the process of learning to play football for our younger guys who are first year players, which is a big bulk of our team, they don’t really understand when you say you got to watch film on these guys, you got to do the homework, you got to study the playbook — all that stuff away from practice,” he said.
“This is when it sort of hits them and if we want to have a different result next week, we’ve got to put in more effort.”
While St. Paul was clearly more polished on the gridiron than the Thunderbirds, Kramer said he think they could compete against them later on in the season, but it was obviously that the Lions were watching film on the Thunderbirds.
It was a painful wake-up call for Westlock who were coming off a 48-22 high against Athabasca the weekend before, though Kramer did say they were up against a “less-polished opponent.”
“We got away with a lot of mistakes last week that didn’t cost us because we have a few real solid athletes that were able to be athletes,” Kramer said. “We got points where maybe we shouldn’t have gotten points. I think some of that was a false sense of security for this week, that we can do what we did last week and get the same result.”
Hopefully the plays will fall into place before the big Friday Night Lights game this Friday, Sept. 22 against the Wainwright Commandos.
“(Wainwright) competed really well against St. Paul last week, they lost to St. Paul too, but they’re a good athletic bunch. We know we’re going to need to be a little more prepared is the main thing, so it should be a more competitive game.”
Two of the three players who were injured in Athabasca are on the mend and will likely be back later this season.
Friday Night Lights will get going at 4 p.m. Kick off is 7 p.m. at the Westlock Elementary School field.
