Gee-Gees romp on opening day

The uOttawa Gee-Gees helped open the 2014 CIS Football season by handing a 51-7 defeat to the York Lions on Labour Day at Gee-Gees Field.

Quarterback Derek Wendel completed 24 of 26 passes for 341 yards and four touchdown passes. Running back Mack Tommy led a Gee-Gees rushing attack that racked up 267 yards, 105 of those yards and a TD coming from Tommy.

Despite the overwhelming victory, uOttawa lost 170 yards and several would-be touchdowns due to penalties.

"Not satisfied at all with the game. Too sloppy, too many penalties. We can't do that against the teams coming up. We can't afford those penalties," said head coach, Jamie Barresi. "The kid (kick returner, Vincent Campbell) ran back kicks three times and they were called back. Not only does it hurt the team, it hurts him. How many times can you run a 100-yard sprint and then be ready for the rest of the game? So if you get that opportunity, you can't let it slip by. I'm pleased that we won the game. But I won't tolerate the penalties."

"We can't shoot ourselves in the foot like that," said Vincent Campbell, who returned one touchdown that counted and totalled 125 yards returning to go with another receiving TD. "We need to do better to stop the penalties for sure. We can't afford to do that against teams like Queen's next week and McMaster."

Barresi drew positives from his defence's play. Even though they were on the field for five minutes more than their opponents, they held York out of the end zone all game, shut out the Lions in the second half, and picked off York's quarterbacks twice. Their collective efforts only allowed 177 total offensive yards compared to uOttawa's 591.

The offence put together a very solid game as well. Wendel got them going early with a quick slant pass to Ian Stewart capping a two minute, 40-yard drive. The Gee-Gees put three more touchdowns on the board before halftime, the nicest of which was a 73-yard catch and run straight down the middle to Ben Fisher.

"It was a good game overall, we had some good execution, but we have to take it easy on the penalties," said Wendel. "All our big plays were called back. We lost a lot of yards off those ones. But we have to take the positives, put it behind us and move on to next week."

Coming out of halftime, the Lions were able to adjust enough to hold the Gee-Gees off the scoreboard until the 7:27 mark of the fourth quarter when Wendel hit Campbell going to the end zone and Nick Dagher, a few minutes later, for his third and fourth TD passes.

The Gee-Gees (1-0) will head down to Kingston on Saturday for a week two match up with the Queen's Gaels (1-0).

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