During their first match-up with the Athabasca Pacers on Sept. 20, the Westlock Thunderbirds football team had a confident 34-21 lead over their northern rivals and was poised to avenge their 2012 Wheatland Football League playoff loss to the Pacers.
But all that changed in the second half, as the Pacers slowly regained the lead and then ran away with the match in the last five minutes, ultimately winning 48-34.
Unfortunately, that downward trend continued during Thursday’s away game in Athabasca, which ended in a 42-0 victory for the Pacers.
“It seems sort of like the second game picked up where the first one ended,” said head coach Jon Kramer.
The match saw Athabasca gain a 21-0 lead in the first half and double their score in the second.
Kramer suggested the Westlock team became somewhat dispirited after how their last game with Athabasca ended and how this one began.
“Part of football and part of sports and life is learning that mental toughness of not letting the scoreboard ... dictate how you respond.”
Kramer said they need to review the film of the match and figure out what went wrong.
“We’ve got a couple weeks to figure that out and get a plan in place before we end up playing (Athabasca) again.”
Ironically, there were still plenty of reasons to celebrate on Thursday; even with the loss, the T-Birds are in second place within their division in the WFL, and their 4-2 record is an improvement over last year’s 3-3 showing.
“4-2 is probably our best record that I can remember,” he said.
“There’s lots to celebrate and there’s still time to work on our weaknesses, so we feel like we’re in a pretty good place going into the playoffs.”
The Westlock Thunderbirds will first face off against the Vermilion Marauders this Saturday, Oct. 19, at 1 p.m. at the field behind Westlock Elementary School.
While nothing is certain in football, Westlock’s chances are good, having beaten Vermilion twice this season 60-28 and 30-7.
“They’re the first ones we’ve got to get through, but if we win on Saturday, we’ll go up to Athabasca for the re-match,” he said.
Kramer said the team will have to make some re-adjustments and perhaps deploy their veterans differently before facing the Pacers again.
“We’re not trying to get too far ahead of ourselves and think a lot about Athabasca, but we know that ‘Just try harder’ is not really the solution for the next time,” he said.
In any case, the Thunderbirds are still in a good position of achieving their goal of playing a third playoff match on Saturday, Nov. 2 against a team from another division of the WFL.
“It would be nice to play an opponent we haven’t played before. That’s sort of been our goal (this season),” he said.
“We’ve got a good group of guys, it’s just a matter of figuring out what went wrong and addressing it in the next couple of weeks.”
