The season-long win streak is over for the Holy Trinity Academy Knights.
The Raymond Comets jumped to an early lead and didn’t look back to defeat the Knights 47-25 in the southern Alberta high school football heavyweight tilt Thursday night in Okotoks.
“That’s why we play teams like Raymond, because they’re very good and we hadn’t been tested yet this year,” said HTA head coach Matt Hassett. “They tested us and the disappointing thing is we kind of got punched in the mouth and we did silly things, took dumb penalties.
“You can’t give really good teams extra chances, there were several penalties where we kept their drives going and they made us pay.”
Raymond carried a 34-9 advantage into halftime with Seth Poelzer scoring HTA’s lone major of the half.
“Raymond does so much motion and you can’t really key on one guy,” the coach added. “They’ve got so many good guys you want to limit, but they’ll throw to everybody on the field and that’s what makes them so challenging to defend.”
HTA rallied in the third and fourth quarters, outscoring the visitors by a 16-13 margin on a safety along with a Ben Gutek reverse running play in goalline formation and Poelzer punching in a powerful run in the final minute of regulation.
“We just said, ‘We dug ourselves a hole, let’s see what we’re made of,’” Hassett said. “I thought we did, played much better in the second half, still took some penalties that were disappointing, but overall played better.”
Raymond, the second-ranked 5A team in the province, has won seven straight games since its season-opening loss to the top-ranked Harry Ainlay.
The Knights’ senior team, top-ranked in the 4A ranks, has been off for a fortnight with its anticipated matchup last week with Calgary’s St. Francis Browns cancelled by the 5A team.
Thursday was the first meeting between the southern Alberta powers since the 2022 season.
“It’s disappointing that St. Francis cancelled on us because we wanted these two tough games to end the season heading into playoffs,” Hassett said.
“The same thing happened two years ago when we played in Raymond and it really dialed us in (for playoffs). It was a good test for us and hopefully it shows us what we need to be and what we need to do moving forward.”
HTA is back on the gridiron next week on Oct. 25 with a short trip to Strathmore to battle the Spartans in a game that will determine zone seeding for the provincial playoffs.
