The little team that could is more like the little team that can.
With a roster of 19 players, the South Delta Sun Devils junior varsity football team continues to defy the odds following a 37-14 win over Notre Dame last Thursday evening at Burnaby Lakes in the B.C. High School Football quarterfinal round.
South Delta will now take on Lord Tweedsmuir, which beat New Westminster 31-0, in the semifinal on Friday night set for a 6 p.m. kickoff at Burnaby Lakes.
The other semifinal is tomorrow night between Mt. Doug and Vancouver College.
The semifinal winners will square off in the championship Dec. 2 at BC Place.
The Sun Devils fell behind 14-0 and it looked like the Jugglers would roll to the win, but South Delta dug deep, taking a 28-14 lead with a pair of scores just before halftime.
“When we got down I just told the guys to think of it as a 0-0 game,” said coach Ray Moon. “All year long no one has given us a chance. We have the smallest roster, but we have a lot of heart and a lot of talent, so if we just played our game I knew we had a chance.”
Notre Dame hit the field with 49 players on the sidelines.
“I said before the game that it didn’t matter that we had 19 guys and they had 49. You only play with 11 and our 11 is pretty darn good,” Moon continued. “I think after we went down by 14 Notre Dame may have written us off, much like most people did throughout the season. We went with an empty backfield and that seemed to catch them off guard a bit.”
With the win, Moon is 4-0 this season between the JV squad and the senior Sun Devils squad at Burnaby Lakes. He hopes the run continues Friday.
“It’s going to be another stiff challenge. Tweedsmuir knocked off a pretty good New West team, so we’ll have to play our best game again to beat them.”
Moon added that Scott Martens has been appointed as a co-head coach for the remainder of the playoffs and will become head coach next season.
He is an ex-Sun Devil player and is a new member of the SDSS teaching staff after transferring from Earl Marriott where he coached that school’s junior varsity team. He is also an ex B.C. High School Football executive.
