It took all of one week of play for the St Charles College Cardinals to throw a healthy heaping of chaos into the mix of the SDSSAA Senior Football League mix this fall.
Facing the defending champs and pre-season favourite Confederation Chargers in their opener, the Cards unleashed their impressive offensive arsenal - most notably running back Noah Arsenault (four TDs) - in playing to a 42-42 draw with the Chargers.
Also reaching the end zone for St Charles were Fahad Abdulrahman and Michael Bisschops, with Sele Arewa chipping in with four converts (Arsenault added a 2-pointer).
Ryley Clarke countered with three majors of his own for Confederation, Evan Doyle added two and Tyson Vitali closed out the TD department with placekicker Domadius Aziz splitting the uprights six different times on the PATs.
The remaining two games remained far more true to form as the Lively Hawks bested the Lockerby Vikings 38-6 while the St Benedict Bears recorded a solid 28-10 win over the Lo-Ellen Park Knights.
Leading the offense with two touchdowns, five converts and a field goal, veteran Dean Vildis of Lively maintained that there was no way the Hawks were about to look past a Lockerby team that was making their return to senior football for the first time in a decade, but that also clearly demonstrated there are the building blocks of a pretty competitive team in place on their roster.
"We played this time like it's any other week," said Vildis, who welcomed teammates Hudsyn Young (3 yard run), Alex Campbell (63 yard pass reception from Kade Campbell) and Bennett Timmers (17 yard run) to the touchdown club on Friday.
"No matter if we are playing the top team or the bottom team, we're coming out and preparing. We know that our plays work; we know how to execute them."
Vildis was on the end of a pair of touchdown receptions from QB Campbell, covering 12 and 22 yards - though he was equally as happy about other ways in which he helped contribute to the offense.
"I thought I did a good job of getting open on my routes," he said. "Not only that, I made sure that I was part of the run game, making sure that we blocked, getting my job done so that our running backs could do better."
Speaking of which, the Hawks lost starter Lawson Rautiainen (RB/LB) to a knee injury just over three minutes into the contest, a setback that Lively overcame in a highly resilient manner.
"We're a very close team from a small school," Vildis explained. "When one of our guys goes down, we have to get it back for him. We used that as motivation all throughout the game."
Lockerby recorded their first touchdown at the senior level in several years in the second quarter of play as quarterback Will Stitt connected with halfback Elliot Lees from five yards for the score.
Trailing 10-9 at the half, St Benedict rallied in the final 24 minutes of play as Keegan Adair, Brendan Goffin and Moshood Adeleye all registered second half majors to lead the Bears past the Knights.
A safety touch, another TD from Adair and a pair of PATs from Gabe Matozzo rounded out the scoring while Levi Blouin (RD + FG) and Devun Panella (convert) answered for Lo-Ellen.
