Crocus caps football season with championship

Victory, how sweet it is.

The Crocus Plainsmen have ended their season on the highest of notes, capturing the Winnipeg High School Football League’s Bramwell Bowl (consolation side) championship following a 30-12 win over the Sturgeon Heights Huskies at Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg on Wednesday evening.

The victory comes off massive performances from Crocus seniors Muqtadir Apena, who barged into the end zone once while collecting 130 rushing yards on the night, and Kayden MacEachern, who played linebacker and fullback en route to scoring two touchdowns for his club. Plainsmen defenders Will Cantelo and Griffen Lowery also each registered one interception to help Crocus take two consecutive games for the first time this season after putting up a 3-6 record this year.

Apena, who’s spent the two years with the Plainsmen football program, said a championship win in his pocket makes saying goodbye feel a little easier now.

“It definitely felt really good to come out on top, and I was just really excited and happy that we got the dub,” said Apena. “It definitely was a slow start, but we picked ourselves up and played together and finished off strong.”

His teammate, MacEachern, shared a similar feeling.

“It was a special moment, for sure,” MacEachern said. “Last year, obviously, we played there (Princess Auto Stadium) against Massey and didn’t get the win, so to finally get another one out, especially on that field in the way that we did, feels good. It was a trust. We just trusted the process, knew it was gonna work out somehow, and just kept going.”

The Bramwell Bowl was a rematch of the head-to-head matchup in Week 1, when Crocus downed Sturgeon 43-13 on the road. The Huskies hadn’t won a game all season until they defeated the Kelvin Clippers narrowly by a 23-21 margin last week, but head coach Mason Kaluzniak warned his club this is a team that is completely different from the squad that took the field at the start of the season.

“I know that coming into the year, they were kind of in a very similar situation to us. They had some really top-end talent, and they had a ton of kids that they had to actually, you know, bring in and work with and get them up to speed, which is sometimes hard to do, and I think, like, they’ve got a really good coaching staff and got really good guys over there,” Kaluzniak said. “They definitely improved a ton throughout the season.”

During the first half, the Plainsmen had a chance to add to their 10-6 lead while on the Huskies goal-line, but a fumble and Sturgeon recovery put an end to that idea, quickly shifting their mindset from attack to defence. Crocus stopped their opponents’ attack on first and second down, but a facemask penalty against them later ended up with Sturgeon in the end zone after they converted on a deep throw for 40 yards.

That easily could have been the “TSN turning point” of the game, but Crocus didn’t let that mistake defy the remainder of the game. Instead, they stuck with it and prevailed. To Kaluzniak, that should be no surprise, as he’s seen firsthand how much his players have grown from Game 1 to Game 9 of the season.

“The win for me just shows the resiliency of the group,” he said. “We got put in a situation that we felt was we would be punching up all year, and we knew that, but we had a group of kids that stuck with it, and they came to practice all the time, and they not only worked really hard but also worked hard together. And despite all odds of, you know, losing games to the powerhouses of the league and losing to Massey and all these things that would break a normal team, our guys were able to be resilient enough to win.

“I’m just really proud of the guys for that because to me, when we hang the banner up on the wall, what it really shows is the resiliency of that group and the determination to kind of stick with it, so that win is huge for us. It might not seem as big as you think being a consolation final, but it just keeps moving our program forward. So it was really exciting.”

After Wednesday night’s win on the big stage of Winnipeg Blue Bombers territory, the Plainsmen are now ranked ninth overall in the province. Granted it may not be the flashiest result, it does speak volumes about the type of program and culture Kaluzniak and the rest of his coaching staff have been able to build over the last three years.

Last year, Crocus capped off its season with a No. 10 overall ranking province-wide, and the season previous, they finished 16th. Off the field, the club has seen an overarching maturity in all the players that have stepped in the locker room, which helped build a foundation for a strong, tight-knit team as well.

“It was our motto all year long. Our defensive co-ordinator said to the boys, ‘All we got is all we need,’” he said. “Everybody in this locker room, that’s all we got, and that’s all we need. We always were going to the locker room and would close the door because there was nobody coming in to save us. Everybody in here is all we need, we’ve just got to band together and keep going, and that’s what the boys did. They just continued to move this thing forward, and it always gets you excited for next year.”

» mdelucataronno@brandonsun.com