Five consecutive league championships in just six years of existence.
The Vancouver Island Raiders have now become a junior football dynasty.
Led by a head coach from Prince George and a running back who still considers P.G. his home, the Vancouver Island Raiders wrapped up their fifth-straight B.C. Junior Football Conference title two weekends ago in Kelowna, a 16-14 win over the Okanagan Sun.
Head coach Matt Blokker said of all the teams he's guided to BCJFC championships, this year's Raider team gave him the most satisfaction
"I was probably more excited winning the fifth one than I was winning the first one."
Blokker. "This was supposed to be a complete rebuilding year for the Raiders and it's really exciting. When you win five in a row, people start saying you're a dynasty, and that's just huge for the organization. We were able to win five in our first six years.
"This was a special group of kids -- a lot of new faces and a lot of responsibility on some faces that never had that before and I'm just really proud of these guys who took on those challenges."
And there's still more to come. On Saturday, the two-time defending national-champion Raiders play host to the Hamilton Hurricanes in the Canadian Junior Football League Intergold Cup. The winner advances to the CJFL Canadian Bowl championship Nov. 13 in either Saskatoon or Regina.
Raiders tailback Jordan Botel likes his team's chances. In five seasons, including playoffs, the Raiders are a perfect 36-0 playing on their home field at Caledonia Park in Nanaimo.
"It definitely feels great to play in our own house, we've been rolling at home," said Botel. "It's loud and our fan support is great, around 2,000 or 2,500 and it's kind of a hard place for teams to play.
"After that win (over the Sun) everything was pretty surreal and it kind of makes you really appreciate the fact we're one of four junior teams in all of Canada playing football. We have to keep working for it to keep our season alive, and we've got two games left."
Dating back to 1890, the Saskatoon Hilltops, Regina Rams and Edmonton Huskies are the only Canadian Junior Football League franchises to win the national championship three years in a row. The Raiders would join that select company if they beat Hamilton, then go on to defeat the Prairie champions for the national title. The Hilltops and Regina Thunder meet in the other CJFL semifinal Sunday in Saskatoon.
The Raiders went 9-1 in the regular season, same as the Sun, but Okanagan was awarded first place based on the point differential in the season series. In the Cullen Cup BCJFC final, Mark Mueller kicked a 28-yard field goal with 28 seconds left to cinch the win.
"At the end of the day it was the team that executed most in the red zone and that was us," said Blokker. "We didn't have as many opportunities but we executed the ones we had. We just found a way to stop them and when we were in the red zone we made every field goal attempt that we kicked."
Penalties played a huge factor in the final. The Raiders had just four penalties called for 30 yards. The Sun incurred 60 yards in penalties, one that proved extremely costly in the end. With the Raiders trailing by a point with 1:24 left in a third-and-16 situation, they were punting the ball when a Sun rusher made contact with Mueller. The roughing-the-kicker penalty gave the Raiders an automatic first down and they drove downfield to set up the winning kick. The Sun had a chance to win on the final play but kicker Steve Shott just missed on his 48-yard attempt.
"It's one of the biggest emotional high you can have, winning a close championship like that," said Botel. "Last year we rolled through playoffs and the year before that we had another dominating playoff run."
Despite losing starting tailback Andrew Harris (now with the B.C. Lions) and four starting offensive linemen to graduation, the Raiders scored a league-high 481 points and broke their own BCJFC record for total offensive yards. Their total of 5,097 yards beat the standard of 5,022 they set last season.
Quarterback Jordan Yantz led the BCJFC with a 64 per cent completion ratio (182 of 284), totaling 2,913 yards and 33 TDs. Michael Schaper, Whitman Tomusiak and Andrew Smith were the league's top receivers. With 1,179 yards, Schaper broke the CJFL record for most yards by a receiver in one season.
Blokker said his 15-member coaching staff, which includes former D.P. Todd Trojans coach Curtis Hansen, deserves much of the credit for the Raiders' success.
"It was a championship that I, 100 per cent, believed we were going to win and I believed that because we have one of the best coaching staffs in Canada," said Blokker. "As much as people always make it about the players, I truly believed our coaching staff was going to coach a championship team and they did."
