The Peacock Tornadoes’ five-year run of dominance in the Moose Jaw High School Football League came to an end on Saturday afternoon.
The Swift Current Colts pulled off a massive win for their program, beating the Tornadoes, 36-15, at Gutheridge Field in semifinal action.
“It sucks, you kind of have to live with it forever, but you just hope that the guys next year learn from it and hope that they do better,” said Peacock senior Shawn Campbell after the loss. “It was a good four years and I left it all out there, so I’m happy.”
After losing to Peacock in the league title game last year, this was a big win for the Colts program, but this also marked the first time that they’ve beat the Tornadoes since 1999, which makes it a historic win for Swift Current.
“We’ve gotten handled and handled, and then we’ve been close, and there’s not words to describe how happy I am for the kids and for our program, this is for all the guys that have worn the jersey and wanted to get this win and weren’t able to pull it off,” said Swift Current head coach Derek Murdoch.
“I give them a ton of credit, they were battling with some injuries and we played physical and it was tight. We squandered some opportunities early in the first quarter when we had the wind.”
There was a few turning points for the Colts that helped them to the win, the biggest being an unbelievable catch by receiver Nic Bachiu for a touchdown with just 12 seconds remaining in the first quarter.
The 25-yard circus grab in the zone came just 21 seconds after Peacock’s Payton Chow ran 79 yards for a touchdown that put the Tornadoes up 15-7 with under a minute remaining in the first half.
“I rolled over and had not felt the ball anywhere, I felt a little something on my legs, clinched my legs as hard as I could, looked back, seen the ball, seen the touchdown signal and I’ve never been so shocked in my life,” said Bachiu on the momentum changing touchdown.
The Colts fed off that touchdown going into halftime. They had the wind to start the third quarter and took full advantage, scoring a pair of touchdowns to take the lead and Peacock could never recover.
“I’ve never beat these guys in my high school career, this is the best feeling that I’ve ever had in any spot ever,” said Bachiu, who finished with three catches for 59 yards, rushed eight times for 45 yards and scored three touchdowns in the win.
Running back/linebacker Josh Keller and receiver Emmett Guider added touchdowns in the second half and the Colts’ defence pitched a shutout over the final 24 minutes to secure the win.
Peacock’s offence was banged up entering the game and they were really put in a hard spot when starting quarterback Garrick Ward went down in the second quarter. Chow took over, but he also left with an injury in the third quarter.
In the end, the Tornadoes were held to just 128 yards of offence, including only six yards passing, in the loss.
“Our core group of grade 12s stepped up today and did a job, but the issue is that you can’t sustain your starting quarterback going out, you have to shuffle everything around and then Payton Chow going down as well,” said Peacock head coach Bert Redstone.
“It was a tough situation, but that core group of guys that have played for a few years did whatever they could today, but just fell short.”
Chow finished with nine carries for 82 yards and a touchdown. He was 1-of-4 for minus-two yards passing while filling in for Ward, who went 0-for-5 before the injury.
Tony Cushway came in at quarterback after Chow was injured and completed one pass for eight yards to Ashton Woodley.
The other semifinal on Saturday saw the Yorkton Raiders roll to a 59-0 win over the Vanier Vikings, which means that the Moose Jaw High School Football League title game will be played outside Moose Jaw for the first time in history.
Yorkton will host Swift Current coming up this Saturday.
Fri, Apr 19, 3:55 PM
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