Coaches and players alike admitted the Ballenas Whalers’ football game Saturday was not very pretty. But getting the win was a thing of beauty.
“We got our mojo back,” tailback Dayton Coles said after the Whalers outlasted Nanaimo District Secondary School 27-13 on a sloppy field in their home opener. “It was a hard-played win, and we needed it.”
The Whalers (2-2, 2-1 in Western AA Conference play) were coming off a 41-12 loss to Seaquam, the top-ranked AA team in the province, in their third straight road game to open the season.
The were also hosting the program’s annual mothers appreciation game, during which many of the players’ moms braved the rain while wearing their sons’ road jerseys on the sideline.
The Whalers return home Saturday to host Windsor in a key conference game at 2 p.m.
It was a contest dominated by the ground game, and Coles led the way with 160 yards on 20 carries, the game’s first touchdown on a 15-yard run, and a two-point conversion run.
Ballenas quarterback Ben Robinson’s first pass of the game squirted from his grip and fluttered into the hands of NDSS defender Finn Bradbrooke for an interception.
The Whalers did not attempt another pass.
The hosts made it 13-0 in the second quarter when Robinson tried a quarterback sneak on a fourth-and-1 play and the middle of the line opened up, allowing him to scamper for a 76-yard touchdown run.
Ballenas Whalers quarterback Ben Robinson, centre, finds daylight and turns a fourth-down keeper into a 76-yard touchdown romp in the second quarter of Saturday’s win over NDSS at Ballenas Secondary School in Parksville. — Image credit: J.R. Rardon/PQB NEWS
The score held until the third period, when the Islanders took advantage of a drive-extending personal foul penalty to make it 13-7 on a five-yard run.
The penalty was one of a series of unsportsmanlike conduct and personal foul infractions that drew the ire of the coaching staff after the game.
“Nanaimo’s got some good players and they play some good football,” Ballenas coach Dan Smith said. “But at times our undisciplined behaviour and mental mistakes cost us.”
Ballenas marched right back, with Robinson capping an eight-play, 52-yard drive with a two-yard scoring run with 1:33 left in the third quarter.
With NDSS driving after the ensuing kickoff, quarterback Maren Bradbrooke and tailback Donovan Davidson-Collie collided on a handoff attempt. The ball popped loose, and the Whalers’ Liviano Canil plucked it from the air and rumbled 83 yards for a TD to make it 27-7 with 7:45 left to play.
