The first two weekends of the season, all three of the Valley Bulldogs competitive minor football teams won their games. The atom Bulldogs, in fact, won their first three games of the season.
It was a different story Sept. 27 in Canning, when all three Valley teams ended up on the short end of the score.
The Atoms suffered their first loss of the season, 40-6 to Dartmouth, which scored on its first two possessions to take an early 12-0 lead.
The Bulldogs responded with a touchdown run by Daniel Ehler to narrow the deficit to 12-6. However, according to head coach Paul Arsenault, “that was as close as the game would be as the physical Dartmouth squad wore out the young Bulldogs.”
The coaching staff has shrugged off the result and Arsenault was hopeful the players could as well.
“We’re hoping the boys can learn from this game, and get things back on track for Bedford this weekend,” he said.
In what head coach Rob Suffron called “a hard-fought battle,” the peewee Bulldogs were defeated 20-8 by Dartmouth. Sami Whidden had the lone Valley touchdown, and Owen MacRae added a successful convert.
Whidden, new to football this year, is “a great addition to our team,” Suffron said.
A “pure athlete,” with good size and speed, and “a great kid,” Whidden has been playing tailback and fullback on offence and middle linebacker on defence.
The bantam Bulldogs, meanwhile, were “smoked” 54-0 by Dartmouth, head coach Kevin Hayes said.
“We simply couldn’t execute on defence,” Hayes said. “Dartmouth only had the ball 15-20 per cent of the game because they scored so fast, on one, two or three-play drives.”
Offensively, the Bulldogs “were able to move the ball in spurts, but were never able to sustain a full drive.”
Dartmouth, he said, “is a better team, but they shouldn’t have been able to have such an easy time of it.”
As for his team, Hayes said they were “refocusing” for their next game against Bedford, “an equally strong team.”
