The Prince George Polars are about to go where no senior Prince George high school football team has ever gone before.
They've advanced to the quarterfinal round of the B.C. High School Football Association playoffs after a 19-0 preliminary round playoff win over the Robert Bateman Timberwolves in a game played Friday in Kamloops.
"We made history, the first varsity team from the Northern Conference to win a provincial playoff game" said Polars head coach Brett Morrow told Vancouver Province reporter Howard Tsumura.
"We were physical and dominated the line of scrimmage. We showed great poise and desire."
The Polar defence was suffocating, limiting the T-wolves to just 90 yards of offence. Isaac Rogers led the Polars offensively, rushing for 200 of their 286 yards on the ground.
Kaiden Witso, Johnny Tatla, and Tyrell Laing each scored touchdowns on short runs for the Polars, who will face the Carson Graham Eagles of North Vancouver in a provincial semifinal this Friday in Kamloops.
"They were the toughest team, defensively, that we've faced," said Polars offensive co-ordinator Don Williams. "We handled their offence pretty well, but their defence was pretty impressive. Their linebacker, Devin Sidhu (who finished with 14 tackles), we couldn't figure out where he was coming from or how he was getting to us but he was making tackles all over the field.
"We really controlled the ball on offence, we just didn't get to punch it in as many times as we normally would."
The 19 points they did score against Bateman were the fewest the undefeated Polars (7-0) have scored in a game all season.
The Polar defence came up big when it had to, preventing the T-wolves from scoring three times after the Abbotsford team had advanced the ball past the PGSS 20 yard line. The Polars recorded a season-high 15 quarterback sacks. Spencer Vohar and Jujhar Sandhu kept Polar drives alive when they each recovered onside kicks.
"We got beat by a better, more physical team today," said Bateman head coach David Mills told Tsumura.
"Congratulations to the Polars, they came in and won both sides of the line of scrimmage. We didn't help our cause with a couple of timely fumbles. They did a good job getting pressure on our quarterback and shutting down our running game."
Carson Graham is ranked fifth in the province. The Eagles, the second seed in the Western Conference, defeated the Hugh Boyd Trojans of Richmond 25-8 in a double-A varsity playoff Friday in North Vancouver.
"It's a winnable game for us if we play really well," said Williams. "We met our goal for the year, which was to win in the first round of playoffs and now everything going forward is a bonus and we'll go as far as we can."
In preliminary round junior varsity playoff results Friday morning, also in Kamloops, the PGSS Polars lost 60-52 to the Westsyde Blue Wave of Kamloops the top seed in the Interior. The Polars led by three touchdowns at the half and gave up the winning points in the final minute.
"I've coached a lot of games and that was the craziest game I've been involved in," said Williams, who also coaches the PGSS junior team. "To have both teams score over 50 points, it was a crazy game. The big difference was we had 18 players and they had 40, so in the end they had a little more gas than us."
On Thursday, the Duchess Park Condors won their preliminary round game, defeating Vernon 25-17. The Condors will play Mission, the No. 2 seed in the Valley Division, in a quarterfinal playoff Friday.
