‘Sick feeling’ after Homecoming upset

Lack of discipline the major factor in men’s football 22-18 loss to winless Windsor Lancers


Photo by Andreas Patsiaouros
Photo by Andreas Patsiaouros

Every single time the Wilfrid Laurier University men’s football team’s offence got going, they would shoot themselves in the foot. Despite having the weapons in their arsenal, Laurier would walk away from their Homecoming matchup with a 22-18 loss to the Windsor Lancers.

With the loss, the Hawks’ record drops to 1-3 this season, losing their third straight game of the 2015 campaign while also losing four consecutive times against the Lancers.

“It’s tough. Obviously it’s a sick feeling we have in our stomachs right now,” said fifth-year receiver Greg Nyhof. “[It’s] definitely not the outcome we hoped for, definitely not the outcome we worked for, but that being said we’ve got to pick ourselves up and get working for next weekend.”

“You’ve got to have a short memory in this game, especially when it’s such a short season.”

The Hawks would run into penalty trouble early, with the first Laurier penalty called at the eight-minute mark into the first quarter for five yards. Every time the Laurier offence would get going, a flag would bring them back to where they started.

Marcus Arkarakas made a beautiful pass to Hawk receiver Kurleigh Gittens Jr., who ran all the way for a touchdown in front of a screaming crowd, only for the play to be called back on an undisciplined penalty.

During the game, the Hawks accumulated 20 penalties for a total of 181 yards.

“It seems like we have a good play on offence and then we come back with a penalty. We have a two-and-out on defence and then we come back with a penalty. That needs to stop,” head coach Michael Faulds said.

“You see glimmers of hope out there, but when there’s an orange flag on the ground every other play because of a lack of discipline, that’s discouraging and we need to clean that up.”

The shining star for the Hawks was rookie Nathan Mesher, who made all of his field goal attempts — two from beyond the 40-yard line to keep Laurier on the board.

Laurier’s special teams unit seemed out of place at times, with Mesher’s punt kick being blocked once and followed with many close calls afterwards.

According to Faulds, the Hawks will review the film to see exactly where they went wrong before they face off against their cross-town rivals, the Waterloo Warriors in the Battle of Waterloo on Oct. 3.

Despite Waterloo being 0-4, the Hawks can’t take them lightly — Windsor was also 0-4 coming into the matchup.

“I’m going to have to look at the film and see exactly where we got all of these penalties. It seemed like every other play. It was very discouraging and we’ve got to clean that up,” he said.

“I told the guys, we’re going to run for every single yard we got a penalty this game.”

With the mistakes from Windsor fresh in their mind Faulds thinks it’s going to take a full week’s practice to fix up their issues before facing the Warriors.

“We need our best week of practice and we need to really clean it up. We’re not good enough of a football team to have that many penalties.”

Kickoff is at 1 p.m on Oct. 3 at Warrior Field.

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