Lopsided score means red faces all around

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/09/2010 (5507 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE final football score was Oak Park 92, Crocus Plains 0 — less than a week after the Pembina Trails School Division introduced its Principled Coaching Practices for high school varsity sports.

The villains are pretty easy to spot, right?

The irony is obvious, right?

Wrong.

“Everybody was pretty upset by the score — no one revelled in this slaughter,” said Paul Normandeau, commissioner of the Winnipeg High School Football League’s junior varsity conference.

Oak Park Raiders coach Paul Bennett — a retired Canadian Football League star — did everything he could to hold down the score, Normandeau said Friday.

“I talked to Paul Bennett — you could feel the embarrassment,” said Normandeau, who said Bennett had called Crocus Plains High School in Brandon to apologize.

Crocus Plains had earlier lost its first game 77-0 to St. Paul’s.

Normandeau said Crocus Plains is not only a weak team, it has just 18 players.

Bennett emptied his bench, putting in the second- and then the third-stringers, taking his first-string running back out of the game after the first quarter, and keeping the ball on the ground. After Oak Park ran three punts back for touchdowns, Crocus Plains stopped punting, Normandeau said.

Normandeau said he’s heard from a lot of concerned people since Wednesday’s game. Normandeau talked to officials in Brandon who were at the game, who told him “the Oak Park coaching staff did everything it could short of leaving the field.”

Normandeau said when the margin reaches 30 points, the referee and his officiating crew are supposed to let the clock run and not stop it between plays, but this officiating crew claimed it was unaware of any mercy rule. Games are 48 minutes.

This was the highest score differential he’s ever seen in high school football, said Normandeau. “I’ve seen coaches who on a regular basis run the score up,” but this wasn’t one of those times, he said.

The high school football league is talking to other coaches about how to keep Crocus Plains in the league and have the time to bring players along without being humiliated.

Pembina Trails would not make anyone available for interviews, including Bennett and physical education consultant Nick Dyck.

Last week, Dyck unveiled Principled Coaching Practices to the more than 50 teachers and outside volunteers who coach the division’s high school varsity teams. The guidebook lays down the ways in which the division expects coaches to conduct themselves and to treat their student-athletes.

Brandon school board chairman George Buri said he hasn’t heard of any complaints yet.

“I saw the score in the news, and I thought, ‘Holy cow, that would be demoralizing,’ ” said Buri.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca