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Home > Articles > High School Sports > Falcons capture fourth straight senior football title
Falcons capture fourth straight senior football title
Posted: November 9th, 2014 @ 8:50pm
By CLAUDE SCILLEY
At the beginning of the year, he was the guy hanging around the Frontenac Falcons bench, doing practically anything he could to contribute, trying to keep his spirits up despite the hardship he'd been dealt.
Saturday afternoon, Dustin Brogaard made the biggest contribution of them all.
He scored both his team's touchdowns-and was named the game's most valuable player-as the Falcons defeated the Regiopolis Notre Dame Panthers 20-9 in the Kingston Area Secondary Schools Athletic Association triple-A championship football game at Richardson Stadium.
It was Frontenac's fourth consecutive county championship, and it gave the Falcons the opportunity to play in one of the OFSAA festival games Wednesday, Nov. 26, at Ron Joyce Stadium in Hamilton.
You can bet few players will be happier to be playing in that showcase event than Brogaard, who hurt his knee before the end of the regular schedule last year, hurt it again in a preseason competition this fall and missed half of his senior year before returning, with his knee heavily braced, for the penultimate game of the regular schedule, against with Holy Cross.
Brogaard's first touchdown came on a short run late in the second quarter and it broke a 6-6 tie. His second score came with just nine seconds left in the game, capping a drive that not only resulted in the game-clinching score, but robbed Regi of the time it needed to mount one last drive.
"The whole drive was Dustin and the O line," Falcons coach Mike Doyle said. "We were getting eight yards a shot running the football. Dustin had three or four really nice runs."
That got Frontenac to first-and-goal from the Regi five-yard line, and it took the Falcons all three plays to score. "They were playing us tough," Doyle said.
Frontenac turned an early Regi turnover into a drive that died at the Panthers' three-yard line, as the Falcons settled for a Braeden North field goal. A second field goal but Frontenac ahead 6-0 but Panthers quarterback Quinton Auty found receiver Jordan Pringle behind the Falcons' secondary and Pringle took it for a long touchdown. The convert failed, however, and the teams were tied 6-6 when Brogaard scored his first touchdown.
Another long completion set Regi up for a field goal just before the intermission and it was 13-9 Frontenac at halftime. The score stayed that way until the long Frontenac drive in the dying minutes of the game.
Perhaps the biggest play that didn't involve Brogaard was a pass from Rob Magee to Brendan Steele, on the last play of the third quarter; an outstanding acrobatic catch in the middle where Steele hung onto the ball though he was hit and spun around in mid-air.
"(It) was at a point in the third quarter where we needed a bit of a drive to get out of our end," Doyle said. "We'd had the wind in the third quarter (and didn't score) so it was pretty key that, even though we didn't score on that drive, we got a couple more first downs and gave them a long field again."
Doyle said it wasn't really a day for offence.
"We had a few good pass plays but mostly we won on the ground. They had the two long completions but the defences ruled the day.
"It was windy and everybody thinks on a day like that when you've got the wind that you're going to be able to throw but it's really hard for the kids to throw with the wind because the ball sails on them. They had a lot of passes where the guy was open but the ball went long."
Unable to rely on the quick-strike offence that had been Regi's trademark this year, the Panthers took to the ground but found tough sledding there.
"Our interior of the defensive line really swallowed up their inside run," Doyle said, "and they run a nice little toss-sweep out of their pistol set. They had some success with it early but then our halfback, Devon Parris, as the game wore on, he started seeing it coming and we actually tackled them on that play for a loss a number of times in the second half.
"He played a great game, especially against the run."
Since there are no other triple-A schools with football teams in eastern Ontario, Frontenac gets a direct bid-and a two-and-a-half week break-into its so-called OFSAA Bowl, where it will play the champion of the Toronto District Secondary Schools Athletic Association.
That conference, which includes such traditional powers as Central Tech and Birchmount Park, is down to four semifinalists: Wilfrid Laurier, Northern, Richview and Etobicoke.
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