Gordon glorious in Laurier Homecoming win (13 photos)

Laurier Golden Hawks head coach Michael Faulds likely put it best, calling Levondre Gordon “a special back.”

The fifth year running back sure looked the part once again. And in his final Homecoming game of his OUA career, it was business as usual, despite having to miss a couple mid-week practices to heal up some injuries.

The Mississauga native went for 118 yards, including a 52-yard TD run early in the second quarter, as the Hawks roughed up the Queens Gaels 52-16 in Week 6 OUA action.

“We had amassed a lot of yards rushing, but we had very few over 20 yards, so to get a really big, explosion play (was great),” Faulds said of the running game, while also giving kudos to the offensive line.

“Levondre leads the country in rushing, and he gets a lot of the attention. But the big boys up front pave that way.”

“Our O-line does a great job in creating different gaps,” Gordon added, “They know what type of running back I am, where I take whatever gap’s available, what ever gap they create, and they do a great job of just creating those gaps and letting me read them.”

The lengthy run for the score also put Gordon into elite territory, eclipsing 3,000 career yards on his 25th career TD.

It puts him third in school history in both career yards (3,036) and career touchdowns (25).

For yardage, he trails Andy Cecchini (1987-91) with 3,061 and Dillon Campbell (2011-15) with 3,568.

In TD’s, Cecchini had 27 in his career while Jim Reid (1976-78) still leads the way all-time for the Hawks at 32.

“It means a lot (to reach the milestone), especially how I did it,” Gordon said, “It’s definitely something I’ll look back on when I get older.”

“Right now, I’m focused on our next game and focused on making the playoffs and getting this team to 5-3. But it’s definitely something I’ll be happy and excited about to look on in the future.”

When it comes to the team game, the win was a crucial one for Laurier, who came into last week’s bye week on a two-game losing skid. While Faulds admits he hated going into the bye like that, it was a good thing for his team, not only to heal up but to also do some self-reflection.

“It’s a lonely place at Laurier when the football team isn’t doing well, and you can’t play for two weeks and you’re 1-3,” he said, “We did a lot of soul searching, and everyone dug a little bit deeper.”

And the team came up with big plays on all three sides of the ball, including a touchdown in all three facets of the game.

On defense, Will Amoah ran in a pick six, the Laurier D got five sacks on Queens QB Ryan Licandro. And on special teams, a couple blocked kicks and a muffed punt led to a scramble in the Queens end zone and a Jordan French touchdown.

On top of all that, we haven’t even gotten to Laurier quarterback Connor Carusello.

He had a rough start, only going 2-for-10 in the first half. However, those two completions were huge: a 60-yard TD to Romy Simpson to open the scoring and a 49 yarder to Brentyn Hall that set up another score three plays later.

Carusello went a perfect 7-for-7 in the second half, and finished with 243 yards before getting the hook (as did many of the starters in the fourth, with the score well out of reach).

“As a team, how we stuck with it (impressed me),” Faulds said, “Even though we had a big lead, still that kick return at the end of the second quarter, I was looking to see then at the start of the third, how we’d respond, and we came out very quickly.”

“I was pleased to see in the second half, that we didn’t give them a glimmer of hope…we finally finished a game.”

For Queens, their big highlight was a 100-yard kickoff return from Ben Arhen to put the score at 32-10 going into halftime.

But the Gaels just couldn’t muster much else, held to 209 yards of total offense to Laurier’s even 500.

The win puts Laurier at 2-3 on their 2019 campaign, and in a logjam for that final playoff spot going into the final three weeks.

Now the Hawks have to go into Windsor next week, against a Lancers squad that gave Western all they could in a 58-25 Mustangs win Saturday afternoon.

“Windsor’s going to try to spoil any playoff aspirations we have,” Faulds says, “We’ve got to have a focused road trip, and try to build off of this win.”

“Last year was a different situation, where we were on a winning streak, and we came after the bye week and we started losing,” Gordon added.

“This week was the complete opposite. We feel that we turned it around, our mentality is back to winning, and we can go out and run the board.”

POSTGAME PLUGS

• At halftime, Laurier Alumni presented a cheque for $800,000 to the school for “supporting student wellness and success.”
• Country artist Jade Eagleson performed the national anthem, as well as a mini-concert during halftime.
• A number of Laurier alums were in attendance, including a few that took the field pregame.  The 1989 Hawks men's hockey team celebrated 30 years since their OUA Championship.  As well, coach of the 2005 Vanier Cup winning Golden Hawks Gary Jeffries made an appearance.