Bantam Broncs hosted and lost heavily to Red Deer’s Hunting Hill Lightning on Saturday, Oct.10 but the outcome did not shake the confidence of head coach Todd Lewis in Ponoka boys’ dedication to the sport.
“I don’t care what the scoreboard shows, I am pleased with the game today because we got better,” said Lewis after the final buzzer showed a 46-0 win for the visiting Lightning. “We got bruised and battered, but our guys didn’t give up in the face of a much larger team.”
Coach Lewis did have a point in praising his team as the Bantam Broncs showed in the course of the game that they were truly work in progress: As the first quarter saw successive touchdowns from the Red Deer boys, Broncs first struggled to contain their offensive line, but as the clock ticked, not only did the defence get better, but also offence started to make inroads into the opponents’ zone, approaching as close as 20 yards to the Lightning red zone although they never made it to a touchdown.
In the course of the improvement during the game, Broncs forced a few fumbles, recovered one or two balls from them and even forced a turnover on downs while in the offence Jarred Bussiere hit his receivers successfully quite a few times for up to 30 yard completions while Seth Gratrix led the team with his motivation in both offence and defence, playing both ways.
Coach Lewis also praised Connor Stiles and Emett Norn for their dedication.
Senior Broncs for their part traveled to Camrose and lost to Trojans 24-7 on Thursday, Oct. 8 thankfully without too much damage to the players.
Senior Broncs travel to face league leaders Sylvan Lake on Friday, Oct. 16 and Bantam Broncs host Notre Dame of Red Deer the following day, Saturday, Oct. 17.