Canadian Rights the Ship Against Perryton

By Chris Doelle
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Updated: September 20, 2021

Canadian Returns to Win Column With 51-28 Win Over Perryton

Both Perryton and Canadian had suffered tough losses the previous week (#2) of this 2021 season and arguably the Wildcats had to tolerate more media scrutiny concerning their loss in a forced overtime by a come-from-behind Bushland Falcon team. Knocking off defending State Champions is a big deal. That huge win for the Falcons, by-the-way, earned Head Coach/AD Josh Reynolds a Coach-of-the-Week shoutout and deservedly so. The coaching world goes full circle more often than some realize. HC Chris Koetting actually coached Perryton HC Kurt Habethur (a Perryton native) when he was on staff at Perryton during Habethur’s high school career, and this is the second time they’ve met through the years as opposing coaches.

The Wildcats came out with the first offensive drive of the night going 70-yards on 14-plays to score on a 1-yard TD run by RB Luke Flowers at the 7:51 mark. Canadian would score again with 1:30 left in Q1 on an 11-play, 61-yard drive finished off by a 12-yard QB Camren Cavalier pass to WR Trace Mitchell. The Canadian defense had thus far contained the Wing-T offense of the Rangers, a scheme they rarely need to prepare for. However, on the next Perryton drive on the second play from scrimmage, QB Abraham Hernandez called a counter pitch play which drew the Canadian linebackers and secondary to the weak side while RB Cuyler Feger took the pitch to the strong side. After RB Isaias Dominguez put a solid block on Wildcat DB Baldo Garcia, Feger was off to the races down the Perryton sideline for an 85-yard TD run with 34 seconds left in Q1.

Canadian would open up Q2 by answering the exciting 85-yard Perryton TD run with 9-plays going for 72-yards ending with a 5-yard Isay Ramirez run. But the Rangers would answer with a 6-play, 75-yard drive and a second big run of 52 yards by RB Isaias Dominguez at the 7:55 mark. The Wildcats took very little time to score again with a 20-yard QB keeper by Cavalier with 6:25 left in the half and the Canadian defense held and notched up another turnover for the season when a bad exchange between Hernandez and Feger on a counter-trap scheme was recovered by DL Ethan Stephenson. The Wildcats would quickly convert that turnover for another score in 3-plays with 22 seconds left in the half on an 8-yard pass from Cavalier to RB Matt McClanahan.

It was still a concern for the Wildcats going into the second half dealing with a deceptive Wing-T offense by Perryton, who obviously had been drawing up plays specifically to score on a tough Wildcat defense and they had already done that twice. Perryton took the first
possession and worked on a 10-play drive down to the Wildcat 15-yard line before turning the ball over on downs. Canadian made one 1st down before Cavalier was forced to punt down to the Ranger 6-yard line. They were backed up to the 5-yard line with a tackle for loss by Baldo Garcia. Then looking at a 3rd and 11-to-go when Hernandez hit RB Daniel Hernandez across the middle for a 95-yard TD pass.

The Ranger playbook had scored on a big play for the third time and they were looking for more ammunition to make the game a shootout, down by two TDs. But the Wildcats had already loaded up enough ammo to keep a legitimate shootout from developing. The very next series for Canadian went 72-yards on 4 plays, converting a gutsy 4th and 8-to-go from their own 41-yard line with a 59-yard TD run by sophomore sensation Luke Flowers. The only PAT missed all night by K Emiliano Hernandez left the score at 41-21 Canadian with 2:30 left in the third period.

Perryton’s RB Stetson Garcia would fumble on the third play of their next possession and DL Nathan Mondragon gathered up the ball for the Wildcats. The turnover would result in a 5-play 53-yard drive that ended with a 9-yard TD run by Isay Ramirez with 11:17 left in the game. Canadian would score yet another time in Q4 after a 12-play, 95-yard drive that ended with a 29-yard field goal by K Emiliano Hernandez. Neither were the Rangers out of huge, exciting plays. Just two plays into their last possession, down 51-21 with 4:02 left in the game, Ranger RB Tad Pshigoda broke out of a scrum between the hashes with nothing but 74-yards of green turf separating him from the goal line. The Rangers had burned the Wildcats defense with four big offensive plays on the night, one in each quarter, but it still wasn’t enough to match the Canadian firepower led by Camren Cavalier.

In a post-game interview with Canadian Sports Network’s Russell Gadbois, HC Chris Koetting said: “One thing I’ve learned over the years of coaching is DON’T TAKE A WIN FOR GRANTED. There were times we weren’t doing good things, but we did a lot of really good things. That’s a tough physical team that we were playing. You know that’s a kind of an offense we don’t see very much. They did some good things, too. Coach Habethur does a great job with this program. I’m excited to win, I mean, we needed to win this game, for sure. Just because how things went last week, you know… and we needed to move on from that, start another winning streak. But I was very proud of our kids tonight.”

Koetting and the rest of his staff are also excited to have an open week coming up not only to get some extra work in to prepare for the opening District 3-3ADII conference game at Spearman on October 1st, but to also get some rehabilitation and healing completed on
some key personnel like WR Angel Garcia and RB Jake Krehbiel.

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Photos courtesy Alan Hale Photography
Stats courtesy of Ron Shrader, CISD

SCORING

  
          1ST 2ND 3rd 4th - Total
CANADIAN   14  21   6  10  - 51
PERRYTON    7   7   7   7  - 28

CAN - Luke Flowers 1 yd run (Emiliano Hernandez kick) 7:51
CAN – Trace Mitchell 12 yd pass from Camren Cavalier (Hernandez kick) 1:37
PER – Cuyler Feger 85 yd run (PAT good) 0:34

CAN – Isay Ramirez 5 yd run (Hernandez kick) 10:43
PER – Isaias Dominguez 52 yd run (PAT good) 7:55
CAN – Camren Cavalier 20 yd run (Hernandez kick) 6:25
CAN – Matt McClanahan 8 yd pass from Cavalier (Hernandez kick) 0:27

PER – Daniel Hernandez 95 yd from Abraham Hernandez (PAT good) 3:41
CAN – Luke Flowers 59 yd run (Hernandez kick failed) 2:30

CAN – Isay Ramirez 10 yd run (Hernandez kick) 11:17
CAN – Emiliano Hernandez 30 yd FG
PER - Tad Pshigoda 74 yd run (PAT good)

PER - CAN
FIRST DOWNS 11 - 30
YARDS RUSHING 370 - 394
YARDS PASSING 114 - 204
TOTAL YARDS 484 - 598
COMP-ATT-INT 3-6-0 - 19-31-0
PUNTS-AVG 3-38 - 2-52
FUMBLES-LOST 2-2 - 0-0
PENALTIES 1-5 - 8-70

Photos by Alan Hale Photography

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2015 Canadian - The Wildcats won the Class 2A Division I State Championship with a convincing 41 point win over Gulf Coast power Refugio. This was Canadian's 4th Championship win in 5 Championship games since 2007.

2017 Canadian - The Wildcats extended their winning streak to 16 years. All 16 years they have had 8+ wins. This team made it to the Semifinals with a high scoring offense and great defense.