Steel ready to battle the Valkyries
By Lethbridge Herald on June 22, 2019.
Dale Woodard
Lethbridge Herald
No matter what happens, the Lethbridge Steel are going to enjoy the
moment.
The women’s football team is in Saskatoon Sunday as they get set to
face the Saskatoon Valkyries in the Western Women’s Canadian Football
League cross conference semifinals.
Following their victory 27-22 win over the Calgary Rage June 8 in
Calgary, the Steel head to Saskatchewan faced with the daunting task
of facing a 4-0 Valkyries that captured top spot in the Prairie
Conference.
Ideally, a trip to the WWCFL championship in Regina June 29 will
follow, but after a 2-2 regular and an exciting win over Calgary
earlier this month to get to this point, whatever happens in
Saskatoon, happens.
In the eyes of Steel head coach Quintin Cheverie, his team has put in
the work to deserve to be in this spot.
“They’re excited,” said Cheverie. “I think there is a bit of
nervous energy, but that’s to be expected. For most of them this will
be one of the biggest sporting events they’ve played in. They seem
prepared. We try to get all the adjustments in the week before and
then just try to roll into this week fine-tuning things. So it’s just
about the momentum and enjoying it and not getting them bogged down by
the magnitude and the stage of this game.
“All the hard work is done now. We just have to seize the opportunity
in front of us.”
The opportunity in question is to try and topple the undefeated
Valkyries on their home field.
“They’re one of the best,” said Cheverie. “So it’s definitely
a big challenge. We’ve had two weeks of really solid practice. Our
coaches have been putting in overtime and getting in as much film and
preparation as we can every second we have and not trying to overload
these girls with too much information. If we can overload ourselves
with that information it’s better.”
In four regular season games, the Steel led the WWCFL with 229 points-
for, though 133 of those came against the last-place Grande Prairie
Northern Anarchy.
The Valkyries finished third in scoring with 154.
However, Saskatoon boasts a league-best 20 points-against in that same
span, while the Steel have surrendered 102.
“Saskatoon is just a well-rounded football team,” said Cheverie.
“They don’t do anything too crazy or too drastic scheme-wise that
we haven’t seen. What they do, they just do it extremely well. They
have a handful of top-level athletes on their team and their roster is
almost double the size of ours. That’s one of the things we told the
players this week is to watch their film and just look at how many
players they have on the sidelines so they’re not overwhelmed by that
once they get on the field Sunday.”
Game time is 1 p.m. in Saskatoon.
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