FTLComm - Tisdale - October 24, 1999
   
Tisdale had nothing to be ashamed of or even regret as this picture was taken they were in their final time out of the league semi final trailing by nine points and a minute and forty seconds left. They had played a great game and were lossing as this is their last game of the year and the last game to be played on the old TUCs field.

In team sports no player can take credit for a team's victory or defeat. Tisdale has had the good fortune this season to have the services of Blake Patterson who not only was an effective running back and received but also handled the team's punting. Hudson Bay marched to victory Saturday in nearly twenty knots of wind with running back Brad Piwtorak.(seen on the right) These two players were the offense for both teams but they had to share that glory with the blockers who got them the yards and made the holes.

Ricky Krystal, Tisdale's tail back played his best game of the season diving up field time after time while the Rider's James Harnett mirrored Ricky's performance for his team. Though without a doubt Brad Piwtorak was the game star the shining light of the day was the remarkable weather.

Cloudless skies, temperatures around thirteen C and a steady warm wind from the South West blowing cross field and in the backs of the fans, it just doesn't get any better. Looking passed the Hudson Bay cheerleaders you can see the play and fans with almost half from hudson bay encouraging their team and enjoying the extremely well played game.
In some ways it was the competence that both teams displayed that may have lead to the win by the Riders. On several occasions the Tisdale Toronado team elected to gamble on third and long when they have the ablility to go for a field goal or handle a punt and this lead to turnovers on downs that really hurt, one particularly late in the game. Hudson Bay coaches and players had more confidence in their ability and their gambles paid off. Both teams defense have played better games and quarterback sometimes repeated successful plays up to three times running. One Hudson Bay fan explained that in High School football you do not rely upon traditional strategies because of the lower skill. From what we saw Saturday the skill was there in abundance with some of the best high school football I have ever seen.
This was a great way to end the play on this sports field that has been in use for decades and next season all of the high school sports will be on the newly developed field beside TMSS. It would have been nice for the last game to have been a Tisdale win but Hudson Bay deserved the win Saturday and the field was justly rewarded with the level of competition and sportsmanship.

For a detailed look and loads of pictures of Saturday's game go to the "Second Page" to see the game develop in still images from both the digital and video camera. The Second Page takes almost four minutes to load because of the large number of images.