The opponent is established and now the work begins.
The B.C. Football Conference-champion Westshore Rebels will face the traditionally strong and two-time defending national champion Saskatoon Hilltops in the Canadian Bowl on Nov. 12 at 1 p.m. at Westhills Stadium.
Saskatoon outlasted the Calgary Colts 43-31 on Sunday afternoon to advance to the Canadian Junior Football Championship final for the sixth time in the last seven years.
Saskatoon has won an incredible five of the last six Canadian Bowls.
The Hilltops smashed the Victoria Rebels (as they were then known) 59-0 in the national championship back in 2003, the only other time the locals have advanced to the CJFL title game.
“I equate them to the University of Alabama in the U.S. They’re just really strong everywhere, incredibly coached and they are just a machine,” Rebels head coach J.C. Boice said of the Hilltops. “I felt that Okanagan Sun team last year was unreal. And they [the Hilltops] ended up beating them by two touchdowns — and the Sun was ahead at halftime.
“They have a system,” Boice added of the Hilltops. “It’s like an American program — very good player support services and the results are on the field. They don’t make mistakes. We have our work cut out for us.”
There were, however, a few mistakes on Sunday against the Colts, who are coached by Matt Blokker. (Blokker led the Rebels to that 2003 BCFC title before capturing three national crowns with the VI Raiders.)
On Sunday, Saskatoon did allow those 31 points and surrendered 468 yards in net offence to the Colts, while racking up 344 of their own.
“If you said we’d get 43 points in this game, I’d sign up every time,” Hilltops head coach Tom Sargeant told the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. “But I’m disappointed that I see 31 [against], too. We’ve got to get better. We’ve got to coach better.
“I’m proud that we can live for another week and we can coach better and they can play better. I can’t wait,” he said of advancing to yet another national final. “We move to our ultimate goal that we set every year that our fifth-years leave as champions, and they did enough [Sunday] to get it right.”
Last year, the Hilltops defeated the Sun — then led by current Rebels associate coach Shane Beatty — 38-24.
“They’re physical, well coached and they don’t make many mistakes, mentally or physically,” Beatty said. “But I will say this: We’re very physical up front as well, obviously, running the ball well the way we do with Jamel [Lyles] and Trey [Campbell].
“The fact that our offensive line is big helps us. Their defensive line is athletic. I watched them play the Sun and, yes, they dismantled them,” Beatty said of Saskatoon’s 58-2 thrashing of the Sun in a cross-over game this regular season.
“But we could have put up 55 on the Sun as well. We’re capable of putting up lots of points.”
Westshore downed the Sun 32-21 in Saturday’s BCFC championship game.
“We're going to have to play our best game of the year and I’m going to have to make some changes on defence, again. We’ll have to stop their run and play a little more man-to-man [defence],” Beatty said.
“To be honest, we have the horses here. The difference is our secondary is young, as with the Sun, we had a secondary that had been there for awhile. I learned some mistakes that I made in this game last year that I have to fix, and it won’t be a problem,” he said.
