Cobras win south zone championship

By Tim Bryson Co-coach WCCHS Cobras football team

The Willow Creek Composite High School Cobras football team continued their great 2024 run with a convincing 28-16 win over the W.R. Myers Rebels of Taber to win the South Zone 3A football championship. It was the first zone football championship for the Cobras since 2019, when they won the old Tier-4 championship.
After the previous week’s thrilling win in Cardston, the Cobras had to quickly turn their attention to a Myers team that had only lost once this season and was ranked second in the provincial 3A standings.
A key to going toe to toe with Myers is to match their physicality early in the game. In the last few years, the Cobras had been unable to do that, but last Friday, they were more than up to the task.
After stuffing the Rebels’ offence on a third down gamble on their first series, the Cobras marched 38 yards on seven plays to take a quick 7-0 lead.
For the rest of the first quarter, the game settled into a defensive rock fight, with neither team giving an inch. Early in the second quarter, the Cobras caught a break when Ethan Hall forced a fumble, setting up the Cobras at the Rebel 21-yard line. The drive stalled before Zak Wright kicked a 24 yard field goal for a 10-0 lead. The Rebels got on the board with a 60-yard run to set up a short field goal to cut the lead to 10-3. However, the Cobras responded by driving 75 yards in five plays to stretch the lead to 17-3. The key play on this drive was a 54-yard run by Ethan Hall. A recovery of the ensuing kick off by Zak Wright set the Cobras up in great field position, but a penalty wiped out a touchdown reception by Easton Wright and the Cobras settled for a single point on a 27-yard field goal attempt that sailed wide to the right.
There was no let up in the third quarter, as the Cobras struck after a Myers fumble that was recovered by Hayden McClung. Zak Wright got to the edge of the Rebel defence and sprinted in from 45 yards out to stretch the lead to 25-3. Another defensive stand and a short punt into the wind set the Cobras up with good field position again, leading to another Wright field goal, this time from 36 yards out, to stretch the lead to 28-3.
The Rebels responded by driving 74 yards in nine plays to cut the lead to 28-10 going into the fourth quarter. Another drive of 61 yards in nine plays got the Rebels a bit closer, but a two-point convert attempt failed, leaving the score 28-16 with just under five minutes remaining.
The Cobras offence then choked the life out of any thoughts of a Myers comeback by driving 91 yards in 10 plays, while using up the rest of the clock. Of the 10 plays, nine were on the ground, making it the best work the Cobras’ rapidly improving offensive line has done all year. The game ended with the Cobras taking a knee in “victory” formation at the Rebel 1-yard line.
The central feature of the Cobras’ success on this night was the run game, which churned out an amazing season high of 305 yards on 37 carries, including 75 yards on that all-important final drive.
The Cobra defence continued its run of excellent play, holding the very potent Rebel run game to 186 yards on 34 carries. If one subtracts the yardage from five big plays, the average on the remaining carries was about two yards per play, with 10 running plays being stuffed for negative yards, and 18 plays picking up three yards or less. The key to slowing down the Rebel run game is to not allow big plays to lead to more big plays and allowing the Rebels to get the emotional edge they have so often enjoyed in games against the Cobras in the last four seasons.
The win was the Cobras sixth in a row, moving us up to third in the provincial 3A rankings, and marks the first time since 2019 we’ve won a zone banner. It’s even sweeter that it is the inaugural banner for the new 3A division, made up of schools with populations up to 800 students. Our combined population (with County Central of Vulcan) is about 300 students, so we are punching well above our weight and punching hard. It was not lost on the coaches of either team that, after all the off-season reorganization of high school football in Alberta, and the end of the old Tier-4 division, the two teams playing for the 3A zone banner were two old Tier-4 rivals.
Next action for the Cobras is a provincial quarter-final game against the Bow Valley Bobcats of Cochrane this Saturday at 1 p.m., at Lethbridge Community Field on the University of Lethbridge campus. Bow Valley struggled early on this season, but are improving dramatically week by week, so this will be another stiff challenge for a team that is playing its best football in five years.
See you at the Game!