Lancers put the cap on perfect 9-0 season

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For the second year in a row, East York is home to the top junior high school football team in the city.

The Leaside Lancers completed a stellar campaign on Thursday, Nov. 20, with a 17-10 win over North York's Chaminade College in the city junior final.

It marked Leaside's first ever junior championship, capping off an undefeated season of nine straight wins.

Last year's city junior title was won by the East York Goliaths.

"The theme for this week was make history, and they did. No Leaside (football) team has ever played nine games," said Lancers junior coach Mark Chambers, referring to the number of games (nine) it takes to reach the city championship.

The game itself, he said was "a real battle."

"The Chaminade team was quite big and they had a great inaugural year. But our boys committed for a good three months this fall and worked really hard to win the championship."

Leaside quarterback Michael Gallagher accounted for both majors on runs and Stephen Edwards added a field goal as well as the TD converts.

Against most teams this season, Leaside was able to employ both an aerial and ground attack - but not in the final, said coach Chambers.

"(Thursday) the passing game never really came together - we had a couple of spots. But we ran the ball quite successfully."

Leaside proved dominant the entire year, out scoring opponents 201-88 in the nine games - and all while residing in the tough south division which is home to traditional powerhouse Northern and lately a rejuvenated East York.

"If you look on the championship trophy from the juniors, I think five out of the seven teams (inscribed on it) are from the south. It's a tough division," said Chambers. "But I think it's really good. I think it says a lot about football in Toronto and that's not to take anything away from the other divisions either.

"I thought Silverthorn (from the west division) had a really good team this year, and Chaminade (from the north division) was a really good team as well."

As it turns out, the Lancers closest margin of victory - by five points - was in the previous week's city semifinal win, 11-6 over west division champ Silverthorn Collegiate of Etobicoke.

Leaside won its south division championship 20-8 over Northern and its south semifinal 20-10 over North Toronto.

Portents of a good season were clearly in evidence in Leaside's third game of the season when they disposed of defending city champs East York right on their own turf in front of a huge crowd in the annual Friday Night Lights game.

Next year's senior Leaside team should stand to benefit with many of this year's juniors moving up.

But it's a tough division as evidenced by the fact that Northern, also on Nov. 20, won the senior city title for the second year in a row (31-10 over Scarborough's Birchmount Park) to enter the Metro Bowl playdowns. The previous two years, the East York Goliaths represented the south division in the senior city finals.

"The biggest thing that's going to be good for our senior team is we have a really committed group of kids going from junior to senior that I never had any problem getting them out to practice. Always had almost 50 guys in uniform every practice, so that says a lot about them.

"And I think any time you get a group of guys that want to come out and play, and want to practise every day, you're going to have a good team."

As with any good team, there were a couple of leaders.

"We had great seasons from Morgan Moskalyk, that was a big one; Michael Gallagher, the quarterback, played very well. On defence, we had two outstanding players, Jacob Surdi and Stephen Edwards.

"We thought our defence was going to be an issue at the beginning of the year, and it ended up being outstanding, shutting down teams, keeping Northern to eight points and keeping East York to 13. That's quite a feat. They played outstanding."