May 19th, 1988: West Defeats East in the OMFL Grads Game

I hit a wall at 1988 while gathering results for the Athletes In Action high school senior game some months ago. Being that I've been collecting scores from right around that time period for a bunch of other teams, I thought I would give it another try.

I don't know how I missed the 1988 and 1989 game articles the first time. The Citizen had full-page ads for them!

In truth, I think it's because the emphasis on Athletes In Action is not present by then. Whatever the cause, the recaps for those two contests are now included on the "AIA Game" page above. The Citizen was a very supportive partner of this endeavour for a few years. 

In tracking those down, I found something completely unexpected; a Midget All-Star game in 1988 featuring players from the four Ottawa teams competing at that level at the time.

The following year, the teams went with Red / White identification rather than a regional one.

Coverage of the Midget level gets very spotty as we enter the 1990s but I'll make a point to continue looking for summaries of these all-star games played in the spring.

1986 Midget Championship Game

I had some success this afternoon filling out some of the details from the early years of the midget level in the Ottawa area, the mid-to-late 80s in particular.

In doing so, I came across the image below from the 1986 championship . While the level of play was covered much more extensively at the time than it is nowadays, it seldom included photography (or at least the Ottawa Citizen didn't include much) so I thought it was worth holding on to and sharing. 

The Trojans went on to win the game 20-07. It was their third straight championship.

"Jackson Bennett has monster game as Bengals upset Redskins for midget title"

The CFL draft takes place on Thursday night and after raising his stock over the past few months, University of Ottawa defensive back Jackson Bennett is expected to be taken within the first two rounds.

Bennett made the Ontario University Athletics all-star team twice; first team as a defensive back and second team as a return man. He was again honoured as a DB with a second-team All-Canadian selection.

Photo credit to Greg Mason for thefulcrum.ca

His exploits predate The U. of O, however. While looking for information about him, I came across an article by Fred Sherwin for Orleans Online.

The Bengals' offence raked up 56 points against a Redskins team that had only allowed 68 points all season long, while the defence managed to hold Nepean's offence to just 39 points. 

Jackson Bennett had a monster game for the Bengals, slicing and dicing his way through the Redskins' defence like a hot knife through butter. The fleet-footed running back gained over 500 yards against the top defence in the league and scored seven times to earn MVP honours.

The Orleans Bengals are the 2013 NCAFA midget champions after laying an good old-fashioned beat down on the previously undefeated Nepean Redskins.  

The REDBLACKS have reportedly tossed around the idea of starting two Canadian receivers but currently only have three on the roster. Receiver isn't the deepest position of any draft so it wouldn't be a shock to see them choose one fourth overall as a result but hopefully a versatile, athletic, local product like Bennett is too tempting to pass up if he's available.

Edit: I completely overlooked that Jackson Bennett was a member of the Sir Wilfrid Laurier high school team which won the NCSSAA senior title in 2013.

**Bengals photo credit to Carol Williamson