By Sam Laskaris
Thanks to three touchdowns in the final quarter, the Northern Red Knights senior football club was able to earn an impressive road victory.
The Red Knights downed the host Etobicoke Collegiate Rams 31-13 in a Toronto high school tilt staged on Thursday afternoon.
The Rams held a 13-8 halftime lead as they scored a touchdown with just two seconds remaining in the opening half.
And the situation didn’t appear to be too hopeful for the Red Knights heading into the second half. That’s because their starting quarterback Lenox Nizami, who was already nursing an upper-body injury before the game, looked shaky and was pulled in the second quarter in favour of backup Dan Mick.
Northern’s offence had some difficulties getting on track in the second half. The Red Knights only managed to score a pair of points, via a safety, in the third quarter.
“We switched our quarterback and because of that we were going to have to rely more on the run game,” said Red Knights’ running back Miles Boehm-North.
Northern managed to take the lead for good when Boehm-North scored his first of two touchdowns early in the final quarter.
“Then we kept that rhythm, kept it going,” Boehm-North said. “Everyone was working well together – offence and defence. We found that crispness that we couldn’t find in the first half. And then everything just went smooth as butter.”
Boehm-North especially gave Mick plenty of kudos for his efforts coming off the bench.
“Dan played excellent considering the circumstances,” he said. “He didn’t know everything he had to do. I didn’t know everything I had to do. We guided each other perfectly and he did as well as he possibly could have. I’m extremely proud of him. And I’m extremely proud to be his teammate.”
The Red Knights are also thrilled they have Sheadenn Bowerbank as one of the anchors on their defence.
Bowerbank said his teammates realized all was not lost when Nizami left the match.
“Of course we were sad our starting quarterback was out,” he said. “But we knew that Dan could step up and get the job done.”
The Red Knights looked like a much different team in the second half, especially the final quarter.
“Our team just stepped up,” Bowerbank said. “Big plays by our offence. Dan had to step in as QB and he made some big plays as well. The offence started clicking, the O-line started blocking and the defence shut them down as well.”
Despite improving their season record to 2-0, Boehm-North realizes his side has plenty it needs to work on to continue having success.
“There is tons of work to do,” he said. “I made multiple mistakes. Maybe it didn’t show in the film and maybe it wouldn’t show to a fan but there were definitely things I could have done better and other people on the team could have done better. We were very scattered but at the end of the day we got the job done and we’re going to come in better next week.”
Bowerbank, who returned a second-quarter kickoff for about an 80-yard touchdown, echoed this sentiment.
“I made a lot of big mistakes, a lot of mental errors and a lot of mechanical errors,” he said. “But I’m going to go back to practice next week and improve on them.”
Jason Downer scored Northern’s other TD, via a pass from Mick. Liam Trail converted all four of his point after converts and he also earned another point after a 25-yard field goal attempt was wide but went out of the end zone.
Northern was originally scheduled to have a bye week coming up. But the team now has an exhibition contest on Friday (Oct. 14) at home versus the Toronto’s Upper Canada College Blues.
Game time is set for 3 p.m.
