The editors were busy Saturday night, updating the Ontario and Canadian university football record books after play was finished on the final day of the Ontario University Athletics season.
Derek Wendel, the former Kingston Grenadiers quarterback, established two national records as his Ottawa Gee-Gees whipped the Toronto Blues 45-9. Wendel, from Shannonville, completed 34 of 46 passes for 564 yards, leaving him with 216 completions from 346 attempts and 3,136 yards for the season.
Those totals all eclipsed Canadian Interuniversity Sport records, breaking the previous marks for completions (209 by Matt McConnell of McGill in 2008) and yards (3,132 by Jordan Heather of Bishop’s in 2013).
Wendel’s 564 yards surpassed by three yards the OUA record for passing yards in a game, set by Tom Denison of Queen’s in a semifinal victory over Western on a snowy day at Richardson Stadium in 2002. Wendel’s performance stands second on the CIS all-time list, behind only the 627 yards thrown by Calgary’s Greg Vavra against Saskatchewan in 1983.
In Hamilton, McMaster Marauders quarterback Asher Hastings was establishing a couple of records, too, though his team lost 46-24 to the Western Mustangs.
Hastings threw for two touchdowns, to break by one the record for TDs in a season. Hastings, the second-year player and first-year starter for the Marauders from Regina, finished the eight-game season with 31 touchdown tosses, one more than Chris Flynn of Saint Mary’s had in the seven-game Atlantic conference season of 1989.
Hastings completed 27 of 41 passes Saturday, to finish the season with a completion percentage of .715. That’s the best in OUA history, passing the record set two years ago by Western’s Will Finch, .697.
Six of those balls were caught by Mitch O’Connor, the Frontenac Secondary School grad who finished the game with 76 yards receiving.
Finch wasn’t shabby Saturday, as he completed 17 of 25 passes for 261 yards, to finish the campaign with a success rate of .695.
Western got a touchdown from Yannick Harou with 40 seconds left in the first half to take a 25-3 lead into the intermission. The Mustangs then got two touchdowns in the first six minutes of the third quarter, one of them on a 111-yard interception return by Malcolm Brown, to turn the game into a rout.
The teams were fairly even in total offence, Western holding just a 495-475 advantage, but the Mustangs benefited from 26 McMaster penalties that gave the Mustangs 234 yards and four first downs.
Harou finished the game with three touchdowns for Western, which finished the schedule with 494 points, breaking the single-season record of 481 points set by Laval in 2003. It was also the 100th regular-seaon victory of Greg Marshall’s university coaching career, his 58th at Western after 42 at McMaster.
Marshall, 100-26-2, joins Saskatchewan’s Brian Towriss (161-93-1), Pat Sheahan of Queen’s (127-82-1), Laval’s Glen Constantin (103-18) and Blake Nill of British Columbia (107-36) as active CIS coaches with 100 or more victories.
At Ottawa, Ben Fisher, the Sydenham Golden Eagles product, caught an 11-yard touchdown pass from Wendel with just 21 seconds left in the second quarter, giving the Gee-Gees a 31-1 advantage at halftime.
Ian Stewart had nine catches for 175 yards and two touchdowns for Ottawa, while Fisher finished the day with four receptions for 46 yards. Bayridge Secondary School grad Lewis Ward kicked a 30-yard field goal in the second quarter.
Former Queen’s Golden Gael Boris Isakov had six catches for 97 yards for Toronto, which finished the season 2-6.
Ottawa had 731 yards of offence, but it wasn’t enough to make the playoffs, as the Gee-Gees finished 3-5, and had their playoff hopes killed by Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks’ 42-26 win over Queen’s ( http://www.sportkingston.ca/index.php/articles/view/3444.html ). That victory left Laurier 4-4, in sole possession of sixth place.
In Saturday’s other games, the Guelph Gryphons clinched second place with a 44-12 win over the Carleton Ravens, while the Windsor Lancers dumped the Waterloo Warriors 44-14.
As a result, Western, 8-0, and Guelph, 7-1, will receive the first-round byes, while McMaster, which finished the season third at 6-2, will host Laurier in one quarter-final. Queen’s and Carleton, who both ended the regular year 5-3, will meet in the other quarter-final Saturday in Kingston. The Gaels get to play the game on their natural grass home field thanks to a 34-24 victory over the Ravens on Opening Day.
In Ottawa, Guelph scored 17 unanswered points in the first quarter and led 27-2 at halftime. The Ravens didn’t get a touchdown until Tunde Adeleke returned a punt 90 yards midway through the third quarter.
James Roberts completed 14 of 26 passes for 327 yards and four touchdowns, which came on plays of 32, 32, 20 and 46 yards. Jacob Scarfone had five catches for 125 yards and two Guelph TDs.
Carleton got 142 yards rushing from 17 carries by Jahvari Bennett, but the Ravens didn’t help themselves by throwing two interceptions and fumbling twice.
Windsor won its second game of the year over a Waterloo team that ended its season withouot a victory. Playing in Windsor, the Lancers led 29-1 when Waterloo’s Caleb Girard kicked a 33-yard field goal on the final play of the first half.
Lancers quarterback Casey Wright, making just his second intercollegiate start, completed 14 of 27 passes for 254 yards and three touchdowns. Nate O’Halloran had two of those TD catches among the six balls he caught, for a total of 84 yards.
Waterloo, outscored 380-66 on the year—more than a third of those points, 24, came in a single game, against Queen’s—had just 155 yards of offence, including 58 through the air. In four games in October, the Warriors managed just 624 yards of offence.
In Antogonish, N.S., Sydenham grad Hayden Peters had a team-best seven tackles and an interception on the final play of the game as the St. Francis Xavier X-Men, who scored a touchdown with just 13 seconds remaining, edged the Acadia Axemen 7-5. The win was the third in the last four games for St. F.X., whose victory Saturday avenged a 31-15 defeat at Acadia on the opening weekend of the Atlantic conference season.