The game plan for a winning season on and off the football field is underway for the St. Albert High Skyhawks.
“If we’re a better team at the end of the season than when we started then I’m happy. If our boys are better people than at the beginning of the year, I’m happy. If they’re better students, I’m happy,” said Sam Johnson, the 2017 metro Edmonton division two Miles conference coach of the year. “Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to win but our focus here has never been on the wins and losses, those will take care of themselves. It’s about developing these young men and that’s what we’ve always been about. If these guys come out of three years of high school, whether they play three years of football or not, but have three years of high school and they’re contributing members of society and they’re ready to move on with their lives, then we’ve done something right.”
The St. Albert Catholic High School teacher has a young lineup to mould into shape with the graduation of 14 Skyhawks from the 6-4 team that reached the Tier III (450 to 749 students) provincial north final.
“This is probably the youngest we’ve been in a long, long time with only four Grade 12s,” said Johnson of the roster of 42 registered players. “We’ve got a good, good crop of Grade 10s coming in and those Grade 10s from last year played a lot of minutes for us, have worked hard over the summer and they will be very good for us too.
“The boys are excited, which in turn makes me excited. I’ve been doing this for 21 years or whatever it is now, and we’re going to try and take it one game at a time, curb that excitement and play every game like it’s the northern final.”
Last season ended with a 35-10 loss to the Holy Rosary Raiders in Lloydminster, the third time the Skyhawks fell one win short of competing in the Alberta Bowl and past setbacks to the perennial Wheatland league champions were 61-0 in 2016 at Clarke Stadium and 28-0 in 2015 in Border City.
The loss also marked the fifth north final in the sixth Tier III appearance for the Skyhawks since 2011.
The only Tier III Alberta Bowl game for the Skyhawks was 2012 as silver medallists.
Previous St. Albert teams to compete in the Alberta Bowl were the 1990, 1992 and 1997 Tier I (1,250-plus students) Storm as provincial runners up.
“We sure would’ve liked to win a couple of those against Holy Rosary but the more these guys play meaningful minutes that experience they bring back just makes everybody better because they pass on that to the younger guys and some of those guys here have never had football pads on before, but they’re athletes and they’re excited to learn,” Johnson said.
The Skyhawks are coming off a 5-3 record in the Miles and two of the losses were against the Paul Kane Blues – 43-30 in Week 3 and 16-3 in the semifinals – leading up to the provincial playdowns.
“It was a good season. We fought hard but we just couldn’t capitalize at the right moment but other than that we did pretty well, we just couldn’t finish,” said Jackson Ganton, an All-Edmonton Miles Team defensive back in Grade 10 last year.
The Miles conference is now an eight-team league instead of last year’s two pools of five apiece. The 2017 champion Strathcona Lords moved up into the division one Carr conference and the Ardrossan Bisons and Eastglen Blue Devils dropped down into the division three Gilfillan conference.
Thursday the Skyhawks travel to Canmore for an exhibition against the Bow Valley Bobcats in preparation for the Sept. 6 season-opener against the M.E. Lazerte Voyageurs, a Gilfillan team last year. Kickoff is 5 p.m. at Larry Olexiuk Field.
The rivalry game against Paul Kane is Sept. 21 at 5 p.m. at Larry Olexiuk Field.
“I like our schedule. We get to play Paul Kane again and we can have some redemption against them,” said Ganton, a two-way Skyhawk at defensive halfback and slotback last year who will spend time at safety this season.
“It should be a pretty fun season. We’ve got a lot of returning players,” Ganton added. “We’ve got Ewan (Vanderheide), a nice quarterback. He knows how to get it deep and he knows the mechanics.
“We’ve also got a nice receiving core returning and our linebackers are looking good too."
Ganton, 16, is a two-time Team Alberta player with stints at the Football Canada U16 Western Challenge last year and the U17 elite training camp in Maui in August.
The U17 provincial team included linebacker Bronson Wilke of the Bellerose Bulldogs.
“It was pretty fun playing against people not from your region who speak different languages and showing their culture. We got to be in Hawaii doing it too, which was pretty cool,” said Ganton, who also played lacrosse this season with the midget A zone north St. Albert Rams.
