Miller Shines, Stingers take home the Shrine Bowl

Concordia Offense Explodes For An impressive 50 points

SportsMichael Boriero — Published October 2, 2016

The Maroon and Gold dominated the Bishop’s Gaiters, 50-34, in a memorable shoot-out performance by quarterback Trenton Miller. It looked like Concordia was going to continue its recent poor performance as they ended the first half down 16-15 to an inferior Gaiters side. But, the second half proved to be too much for the Gaiters. Miller torched their defense with four touchdowns, three in the air and one on the ground.

“It felt really good, we all work so hard, we all prepare so much and it hasn’t shown on the field,” said Miller. “I think putting the points up on the board just felt really good.”

The Stingers managed to put an unfavourable first half behind them. They were handed a ridiculous amount of penalties throughout the game, which allowed the Gaiters to stay on top of them. Referees have always been liberal with their flags in Canadian Interuniversity Sport Football but at the midway point of the season head coach Mickey Donovan wanted to see some improvement from his side.

“Past two weeks, we’ve been taking too many penalties,” said Donovan, who’s voiced this issue before. “We need to find a better way to not be in those positions to even have an official throw a flag.”

Despite taking several careless penalties, the offence rained down on the Gaiters in the second half. Slot back Justin Julien finished the game with an incredible 184 receiving yards and two touchdowns. But once again, it was the defence that held the team together throughout most of the game.

The Stingers secondary smothered Gaiters receivers, as Michael Asibuo had yet another interception. While the defensive line pounded Bishop’s quarterback Jaeden Marwick all game.

“I took some shots that I shouldn’t have but then there’s some cases you just have to man up and hold your guy,” said Marwick. The Gaiters quarterback looked shaken up many times during the game.

Bishop’s running back, Trey Millings, got a lot of work after the first half. He became Marwick’s favourite target and was surprisingly upbeat.

“We have a lot of potential, we made a lot of mistakes today,” said Millings. “We just have to stop making those little mistakes and I mean we put up 34 points, we can score when we want to.”

Gaiter’s head coach Kevin Mackey provided a short response when asked about the outcome of the game.

“If we could play 60 minutes instead of 45 [minutes], the score would be a lot closer,” said Mackey. The head coach was fired up after the game, which could mean the team will have to endure some gruelling practices in the near future.

The maroon and gold will have two weeks to build off an impressive offensive performance. They face the Sherbrooke Vert et Or in an important matchup on Oct 15.