The Sudbury Junior Spartans were crowned the 2022 U16 Sandy Ruckstuhl Cup champions this past July 30, by defeating the Vaughan Rebels 27-25 in London, Ont.
This championship is their first since Sudbury began running provincial level football teams at a youth level three years ago.
Spartans president Gord Goddard was pleased with the win.
“Every person who ever played, coached or was an administrator with the Sudbury Northerners,
Sudbury Gladiators or Joe MacDonald Youth Football can share in this championship. It has been two decades in the making. The vision existed long before this team stepped on the field,” Goddard said.
He also expressed gratitude to the coaches and support group.
“There are four groups I’d like to thank for their support this season - the coaching staff led by Jordan Desilets, the parent group who were there with us every step of the way and the community-minded businesses like Anmar, Technica Mining, the Zulich Group, Driving Forward and SWSE who stood by us all season long.”
Head coach Jordan Desilets gave credit to the team for its hard work.
“We put on our hard hats and went to work for 48 minutes of football. The kids never gave up and ultimately, we came back as OSFL Champions,” Desilets said.
“It was a resilient effort from all our players and coaches on Saturday afternoon, at Alumni Stadium. Sudbury football has officially been put on the map.”
The Junior Spartans remained undefeated throughout their nine regular season and playoff games, shutting out the Quinte Skyhawks 41-0 in their quarterfinal matchup, defeating the Peterborough Wolverines 34-1 to clinch the finals and eventually coming back from a late Rebels touchdown in London, to top off a magnificent team effort to claim their championship, said a team news release.
The Junior Spartans championship will be celebrated on Saturday Aug. 13, during the halftime of the NFC Semi-final match-up when the Sudbury Mens Spartans host the GTA All-Stars at 7 p.m. at James Jerome Field. For more information, visit sudburyspartans.com.
