Whoever said, “Nobody’s perfect,” hasn’t met the Mount Olive Triumph flag football team.
The Triumph completed a perfect 2018 season last Sunday by soundly defeating the Toronto West Saints, 25-17, in the finals of the OYM Flag Football League at Mary Ward high school in Scarborough.
It’s the second time in three years that Mount Olive crafted an undefeated season to win the trophy contested by 13 SDA churches in the GTA.
To be perfect once is amazing. To do it twice in three years is incomprehensible.
Mount Olive has now won the title in three of the last four years. The only blemish was a loss to Toronto West last season. In the last seven years, both teams have three titles each, with Apple Creek taking the other in 2014.
Captain and QB Karl Brown was named game MVP as he gashed the T-West defence for huge runs and timely strikes to an assortment of receivers. Most impressively, Brown tossed two TDs to Petagaye McIntosh and Tenesha Hardie. Girl TDs count for 7 points while Boys score count for 5. That alone sealed the contest.
In the consolation final, the newest team in the league, Apple Creek Royals, won the Redemption Bowl, beating Meadowvale.
A day after the victory, Brown was already setting new mountains to climb: repeat as winners next year AND go for three straight in 2020.
“We’ve done the back-to-back thing. The big one is the three-peat (3 championships in successive years). So the plan is to double up and win next year and then go for the three-peat. That’s never been done.”
And who is going to tell Brown and his squad that they can’t do something. Consider this:
Brown played two seasons with Toronto West when his church did not field a team. The team went to the championship both years, winning in 2013 and losing a perfect season of the final play of the title game in 2014.
Brown returned to Mt. Olive in 2015 and took the tile. In 2016 his team had the first perfect season, winning the trophy again. When they made the pitch for the third straight title last year – and lost to T-West, Brown said it sent him into a tailspin.
“There is no bigger motivator than losing the last game of the season,” Brown said of last year’s loss. “It forces you to go back and re-live everything. The hardest thing is to go back and see the miscues and missed opportunities. It took me months. I couldn’t look at it for awhile.”
But when you face your failures, you can use it as an advantage and it makes you a better person, he said.
Scoring for the Saints were Sheldon James, Darnell James and Dan George. Germaine Clark scored the other Olive touchdown.
Saints were without their starting quarterback Jay Steinberg, forcing George to fill in. The team also sputtered all year without their three perennial elite female players. It showed in the championship game.
Olive took the opening kickoff and marched in to score when Clark beat Sheldon James on an out and ambled into the endzone. Olive promptly stopped T-West on their first drive and then Brown ran one in for a 11-0 lead.
The game’s turning point came on T-West’s second drive when Olive picked off a pass intended for Tyffany Ambrose. To add insult to injury, Olive converted it into a “girl score” as Petagaye McIntosh took it in for seven points and a mountainous 18-0 lead.
Darnell James scored and Andrew Bringpong caught a convert to leave the score 18-7, to provide some hope. Then, taking the second half kickoff, Saints marched down and Sheldon James scored to pull the defending champs within six points.
Undaunted, Olive responded with a girl score from Tenesha Hardie to go up 25-12 and drive a nail in T-West’s coffin. The 13-point deficit was too much to surmount, despite a late TD from George, and the Saints lost their title to the perfect Triumph.
Congrats to Jared Baker, Karl Brown, Germaine Clarke Nick Deslandes, Tenesha Hardie, Cleon Holmes, Junior Jones, Frankie Lazarus, Lamar Lazarus, Petagaye McIntosh, Lindsey Mitchell, Jamel Wilson and Shaa Wilson.
Pastor Frankie Lazarus was transferred to Mount Olive at the start of 2018 and immediately noticed the strength of the team being built.
“We’re putting together a championship team,“ he boasted in February. What did he see all the way back then?
For one, the team was hungry. They had lost to Toronto West in 2017, missing out on their third straight title, and they wanted to return to the mountaintop. Then, the recruits turned out to be just what the team needed. Cleon Holmes defected from Toronto West in search of a larger role. Olive had the space to accommodate him.
“There was a nice spirit to the team. Good attitude,” Lazarus said. “They wanted to beat Toronto West and they did it. They’ve got heart.”
“We have few players and most of us play both ways so Cleon had many opportunities to shine,” Brown said. In fact, Homes scored an astonishing 17 times during the season. Yet, even there, the scores did not come as a result of force-feeding the new recruit. It’s just that Homes took many short passes and turned them into dynamic scores – just the type of devastating impact the conservative, risk-free Mount Olive offence needed.
In the first game of the season, a re-match with Toronto West, Holmes declared his arrival with a spectacular performance. First, he took a dump pass and dipsy-doodled 50 yards for one score. Then, covering a kickoff, he got his hand on a pitch attempt by Toronto West and took it for a second score. And, the coup de gras was an endzone interception that he took 120 yards for a touchdown.
Olive had lost Craig Farrier through a defection, but had gained a replacement defector in Holmes. It’s a swap they would make again, no doubt. Besdies, Petagaye returned from maternity leave and two veterans (Lamar Lazarus and Jared Baker) joined the team.
Brown would only say, “We had no issues on the team this year.“
“The re-emergence of Petagaye was a huge comeback for us. It felt like a free agent acquisition. It brought back that lock down girl we needed. Then with Lamar and Jared we had two character guys. We didn’t have one issue at all compared to last year when it was dealing with a situation all the time.”
Brown said the secret to his team’s success is “having everyone on the same page. Understand their role and don’t go outside the role.”