The Vanier Vikings are in the win column in the Conference 2 Nine-Aside Football League.
And in style at that.
The Vikings rolled out to a 21-1 lead in the first half and never let up, going on to a 61-8 victory over the Gull Lake Lions in Gull Lake.
The win was naturally a heartening one for the Vikings, who are in their first season of nine-man football and had dropped a 41-21 decision to Lumsden in their opening game of the campaign last weekend.
“It was a really good win, everyone played really well and we had a lot of balance from our offence,” said Vikings head coach Ryan Gottselig. “I think we had eight different guys get touchdowns and then the defence played really well too, so we’re really happy with it.”
While Vanier are newcomers to the league, they had faced Gull Lake in the pre-season and taken a comfortable win. That gave the Vikings a rare advantage -- for the first time they pretty much knew what they were going to face.
“They have some good players and are a hard team to play against, but I think they just ran out of gas.” Gottselig said. “It was close after the first quarter and then we just started to pull away… we’ve been in that boat ourselves a few times over the years, so we’ll take a win like that for sure.”
Heading into the campaign, Gottselig felt that might be one of their keys to success in the long run -- the fact that as one of the larger schools in Conference 2, Vanier might have the depth to push some teams out of their comfort zone late in games.
“With fewer players on the field, we have a lot more depth than we’ve had in previous years and that’s helped quite a bit,” Gottselig said, adding that the team in general is picking up the nine-man game as they go along, something that could also help with positive results down the road.
Vanier is back in action on Friday, Sept. 29 in their second home game, this time taking on another legendary team on the provincial scene in the Maple Creek Redmen. Maple Creek is 0-2 on the season, having lost 44-14 to Notre Dame and dropping a 62-15 decision to Shaunavon this past weekend.
“I imagine that’ll be another tough game, so hopefully we can play just as well,” Gottselig said.
