The Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks men’s football team got back to their winning ways this afternoon with a homecoming blowout victory over the Queen’s Gaels, 52-16.
The team got off to an 8-point lead with Connor Carusello sending Romy Simpson a touchdown pass with Nathan Mesher adding a rouge point, but Queen’s would cut the deficit to five before the end of the quarter adding a rouge point of their own as well as a safety.
“We knew we were. Good football team, we were still the only team to be up 17 points on Toronto, we were the only team to have a 19-point lead against Ottawa, the confidence for how good we could be was there, we obviously had to eliminate the catastrophic plays and be a little bit more disciplined in terms of penalties and we did those two things,” said head football coach Michael Faulds.
“We had the bye week to get bit healthier and ultimately, it was a super motivated group and we finally played four good quarters of football. Up until then we had played a quarter really well here, a bad quarter there, a good quarter here, a bad quarter again. The consistency at homecoming was really good to see.”
The Golden Hawks would go on a streak to score 24 more unanswered points in the second quarter, with Levondre Gordon, Will Amoah and Osayi Iginuan all adding touchdowns of their own and Mesher adding a field goal to close out the quarter, but Queen’s would score a 100 yard kickoff return to give themselves a double digit score before the end of the half.
Laurier continued to prove their dominance at the start of the second half again scoring two unanswered touchdowns, with Ente Eguavoen and Jordan French adding seven points each to bring Laurier’s lead to 46-10.
“I think because we’ve had big leads and managed to lose football games that helps us from that standpoint because even at half-time, we had a 22-point lead, but no one was satisfied.
We had the memories of the last two games and how they had gone and we realized we weren’t going to let a team come back into the game,” Faulds said.
“I was really proud of our players and coaches, how they responded in the second half and ultimately you breathe a little bit easier when you have a big lead in the fourth quarter. We just want to continue that momentum this weekend in Windsor.”
Queen’s would be last to score in the third, however with a blocked extra point attempt the Gaels would be left with 16 points in the game. Laurier closed out the game with six final points in the fourth quarter as Mesher would score one last field goal along with a rouge point and the team added a safety to bring the final score to 52-16, Laurier’s biggest win this season and their first homecoming win since 2016.
