Eagles fly into history

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The Sir James Dunn eagles sang their swan song Wednesday morning.

And what a noise they made.

Entering the Northern Bowl championship knowing it would be the last football game played by a team from their high school, the Eagles went out on a winning note Wednesday with a 34-7 defeat of Thunder Bay’s Sir Winston Churchill Trojans at Rogers Centre in Toronto.

“We were playing for everyone whoever went to the Dunn,” said quarterback Mike Campbell, who threw a pair of touchdown passes in the victory. “This was the last game for the Green and Gold. We wanted to go out on top.”

It was confirmed earlier this week that students from Bawating Collegiate will move next year to the Sir James Dunn site, which will be renamed Superior Heights Collegiate and Vocational School.

Meanwhile, a new school bearing that name will be built where Bawating now stands. The combined student population will be relocated there upon completion, and the 52-year-old Sir James Dunn building closed.

Like Campbell, offensive lineman Billy Geiling is 18 and is a fifth-year student at Sir James Dunn. Wednesday’s game marked his only chance to play in an Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations Bowl game, as Sir James Dunn last qualified in 2004.

“It was a long time coming,” said Geiling, among several players who received overtures from Ontario University Athletics scouts following his team’s victory.

“We knew this was it. We knew we needed to go out with a bang, for the school. We didn’t want to come down here and go out on a flat note.”

Tom Annett won his first Northern Ontario Secondary Schools Association and Northern Bowl championships as a head coach.

Staff for the Superior Heights’ athletic programs have yet to be determined, so Annett doesn’t know whether he’ll coach football at the new school, or if he’ll be there at all.

Source: The Sault Star