In this battle of attrition the strength lied in numbers.
The No. 1 ranked Holy Trinity Academy Knights erased a fourth-quarter deficit with 15 unanswered points to vault past the No. 2 seed Cardston Cougars 36-22 in the Football Alberta Tier II South region semifinal in frigid conditions at Knights field on Saturday afternoon.
“We knew Cardston is a good team, they’ve won Tier II like four times and those guys have played together since they were little kids,” said Knights head coach Matt Hassett. “We just wanted to make it a physical battle because they don’t have a ton of players and even if we don’t score on offence make those drives because they have to work harder on defence and most of their guys were going both ways.
“I was really proud of our guys and how they responded in the fourth quarter, one to get the lead back and then to actually finish it.”
Trailing 21-7 at the half, the Cougars came out a different squad in the second half and led by fleet-footed quarterback Rhett Nish the visitors had all the momentum in the third-quarter.
Nish used great blocking from his offensive line to toss a 23-yard touchdown and again had his team in the end-zone early in the fourth quarter on a goal-line touchdown run, giving Cardston its first lead of the game at 22-21 with just 8:52 left in the contest.
“They were actually picking apart the zone coverage and then we went more man coverage,” Hassett said. "And just tried to challenge every receiver for every step and that made a difference.
“We tried to keep that quarterback in because he’s so elusive.”
Needing a change in momentum, the Knights got a spark from a freshman.
Defensive back Luke Gutek stepped up for an interception and return down to the Cougars 26-yard line, setting up the first of two Knights touchdowns in short order.
“I just saw the guy running an in-route towards me and the quarterback looking his way,” said Gutek. “He was wide open so I just shifted over and saw the ball coming and pulled it down.
“It’s good that we were close and ending up scoring on that drive so that really fired up our team and got us going again.”
On the next play, the Knights were in the end-zone as Luke’s older brother Noah Gutek caught his second touchdown of the night, this one a 26-yard connection with quarterback Ben Leggett.
The two-point conversion caught by Jack Dutton got the Knights back in front by seven points.
Stud linebacker Michael Peloso, who played both ways to great effect, punched in his third touchdown of the game with 91 seconds on the clock to see out the result.
“Your stud athletes are your stud athletes and sometimes if you can get a match-up on the other side, everyone was thinking about Noah and nobody really saw Michael that much yet on offence,” Hassett said. “I thought it made it a big difference because we’re a pretty hard team to match up against.”
Peloso opened the scoring on the team’s first play on offence just 41 seconds into the game on a jet sweep.
“I just cut it inside and found a hole,” Peloso said. “It’s not all me, it was good blocking and I was able to take it to the house very first play.
“I think it definitely psyched the team up, it was definitely a good motivator for the first half.”
On the final play of the first quarter, the Knights got out of bad field position in one swift action.
Leggett found Noah Gutek behind the Cougars secondary for a 105-yard touchdown to make it 14-0.
Austen Olsen got the Cougars on the board in the second quarter on a 25 yard pass from Nish before Peloso punched in his second of three majors on a goalline run.
“We just knocked off the number two team in the province,” Peloso said. “Other teams are going to be just as good, but I think we know where we stand and that we’re able to compete with everybody.
“Another week of practice, lock down the things that were a bit shaky today and go out and play.”
The Knights will matchup against the Bert Church Chargers in Airdrie in the South region final on Nov. 16 with a spot in the Tier II provincial final on the line.
The Chargers eliminated perennial contender Hunting Hills in the other regional semifinal on Nov. 9.
