It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t fancy, but it was oh so effective.
The visiting Greater Fort Erie Gryphons went back to their trademark, smashmouth football Thursday afternoon and grounded and pounded their way to a 23-6 victory over the West Niagara Wolfpack in the Niagara Region High School Athletic Association senior AAA semifinal game.
“It’s unbelievable. We found our thing,” said GFESS head coach Dave Sauer, who is retiring from teaching and coaching senior football after this season. “That was a lot of fun. I knew to win that game it would have to be like this. Win a tight game, make some plays on defence and we were outstanding. Our offensive line was great, the defence was awesome, and (Andre) Hercules was outstanding today.”
Sauer admitted he wasn’t expecting such a great outcome.
“I envisioned that if we were lucky we would keep it close.”
He was surprised his squad controlled the line of scrimmage.
“I thought they were bigger than us and when they first played us they dominated us. I am so proud of our guys and what we did. They stood up, they sucked it up and we played tough.”
It will Greater Fort Erie first championship appearance since the school opened in 2017.
“It’s full circle for me which is great and this is all bonus stuff. We’ve gone through some ups and downs and we’ve kind of found ourselves,” Sauer said. “We have a whole bunch of kids who are gritty, they all bought in and we’re here which is awesome.”
Hercules, a 12B player who scored a pair of touchdowns and ran hard inside all game, wasn’t surprised with the result.
“I expected it all the way,” the 18-year-old-said. “It’s a re-do from Grade 10 (loss to West Niagara in regular season and won in playoffs) and we have the same boys out. We had 10 12Bs come back and we wanted it so bad. We knew after that first loss it wasn’t going to happen again. Every single day after practice we did film. We were hitting and grinding every day and we wanted it bad.”
The 5-foot-10, 200 pounder seemed to get hit 1,000 times in the game but he just kept on chugging.
“It’s the adrenaline and I love the grit. I love getting back up and doing it again as long as I know my team has their hope on my back.”
He admitted the hits took a toll on his body.
“I’m pretty sore and I think I need stitches. I’ve got a pretty gnarly cut.”
Hercules is excited to be heading to the championship game against Myer.
“For coach Sauer, it has been 10 years and a full loop and we are happy to get him back there.”
It was important for the Gryphons to prolong Sauer’s last season.
“The boys all knew it was his last year and that affected us mentally. We all knew we had to give it 110 per cent today for him.”
The preparations for next week will begin shortly.
“We get back to it, we get back to work, to film and we keep grinding,” Hercules said.
West Niagara head coach Zack Silverthorne was understandably upset with his team’s performance Thursday.
“It was arguably our worst loss as the Wolfpack. I don’t even know how else to put it,” he said. “We were flat and they went back to their nickel and dime, pound it offence and we couldn’t get the ball back. They out-efforted us and that’s it in a nutshell. Seven-minute drives, a lot of finger pointing, a lot of soul searching and we lacked grit today. This loss was just terrible.”
The Wolfpack has set themselves up for an exciting conclusion to the season with home-field advantage in the semifinals coming on the heels of a great game played against Myer.
“It was exactly how we scripted it and the goal was to make the finals so it was an unsuccessful season.”
Silverthorne felt his team was ready for all eventualities.
“We even prepared them for this but until you see it… You’ve got to get low and you’ve got to make tackles. We had three linebackers out and that hurt but that’s not an excuse. Everybody is missing guys,” he said. “On offence, we just weren’t jelling. We seemed to be moving the ball here and there but then we couldn’t get points. Congrats to coach Sauer. Before he retires, he gets one more game but this is very, very disappointing.”
STATS PACK
GRYPHONS 23 WOLFPACK 6
Cat’s Caboose Player of the Game: Greater Fort Erie’s Andre Hercules with two rushing majors.
For the Greater Fort Erie Gryphons: Andre Hercules, two-yard and four-yard TD runs; Cam MacRae, one-yard TD run; Willem Van Osch, two-point convert on pass from MacRae; Leo Macedo, rouge on kickoff; John Stafford sack.
For the West Niagara Wolfpack: Josh Gausling, 24-yard TD catch from Coby Green.
Game stats: First downs: GFESS 15, WN 12. Net offensive yards: GFESS 279, WN 194. Turnovers: GFESS 3, WN 2. Penalties: GFESS 7 for 45 yards, WN 10 for 75 yards.
Up next: Greater Fort Erie plays at A.N. Myer in the NRHSAA AAA final Nov. 5 or 6.
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