Sault Steelers beat Sudbury Spartans in Power 5 football

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Thanks to a convincing defensive performance, the Sault Steelers beat the Sudbury Spartans 17-0 on Saturday night at Rocky DiPietro Field.

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“The defense at home always seems to improve,” Steelers general manager John Bujold said. “They play with confidence because they know they have backups. Backups give the starters on defense the opportunity to be aggressive and give it their all when needed. We’re happy with that.”

“I’m happy with zero points,” said defensive player Fred Casselman, noting that the defense wanted to rebound after allowing 29 points to the Sarnia Imperials last Saturday. “And it doesn’t get any better than zero points.”

Mike Reid scored a touchdown in the second quarter, a 35-yard run with 9:41 left that opened the scoring. Reid ran for 124 yards on 13 carries. QB Ryan Yost completed three passes for 39 yards and a touchdown. Matt Gauthier kicked a field goal just before halftime.

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Casselman is a dual threat, at least he was on Saturday when he caught a 15-yard pass from Yost with 5:12 left in the fourth quarter. The Major Six was the last play that resulted in points, along with the extra point.

The TD was Casselman’s first offensive score for the Steelers. The TE caught two balls for 31 yards.

“It was awesome,” Casselman said. “We came out with a lot of running play, because we usually don’t pass on the first attempt. The Spartans packed the box and I pretended to do a running block and ran out. The safety was able to touch the ball, but I came down with it.”

The team gathered under the south goal post just moments after the victory, with Reid reminding the squad of habits and commitment.

“To win a championship in this league, you have to have a culture of best practice, and we haven’t had that so far,” Bujold said… “The participation in practice has been good with the guys we have there, but we’ve limited ourselves to 17 to 21 guys per practice, and that’s not enough. We need live representatives and more guys learning their roles, especially the substitutes. At this level of intensity, a substitute is needed.”

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Casselman agreed with Reid’s message.

“If you don’t practice, you don’t get better,” Casselman said. “We’ve improved a little bit (lately), but we want to improve. If you want to call ‘semi-pro’ ‘pro,’ you do it through practice, through film study. We can do better than that.”

With the win, the Steelers (3-2) climbed to second place in the league with one game remaining in the regular season, while Sudbury’s record fell to 0-5.

“It was a good performance,” Casselman said. “You can never take a team for granted. Sudbury came here and they played a great game. I have a lot of respect for the Spartans for coming here and fighting like that.”

The Steelers host the Tri-City Outlaws in a game that could potentially determine first place in the division, with the top seed guaranteeing the winner home-court advantage throughout the playoffs.

“If we win next weekend, we’ll have a playoff game, and that’s important in this league because traveling is difficult,” Bujold said. “It would be nice if the opponent would come to us.”

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