Having fun is the name of the game for the St. Albert Storm in midget spring league football.
Team rosters are a mixture of Grade 9, 10 and 11 players with strong representation of high school talent from the Bellerose Bulldogs, Paul Kane Blues and St. Albert High Skyhawks.
A variety of coaches with connections to the three teams or ties with the St. Albert football scene also provide quality instruction.
“It’s a blast,” said Ewan Vanderheide, a fiery Grade 10 quarterback with the Skyhawks after the Storm buried the Parkland Predators 27-7 Wednesday at Larry Olexiuk Field.
“It’s good to have all the boys and all the different coaches together to see how every high school is like,” Vanderheide added. “At the end of the day we just play ball and that’s all that matters.”
The midget spring league, which is run by the Capital District Minor Football Association, also breaks up the off-season monotony before the high school spring camps kick off in May and June.
“I love it. It’s great. It’s pretty much like the high school season never ends honestly because we’re playing against some of the same guys you play in normal high school football,” said Nathan Brake, an ultra-fast Grade 11 slotback who will be catching touchdowns with the brand-new Sturgeon Spirits in the fall after two seasons with the Bellerose Bulldogs.
“It’s just great practice for the upcoming season playing against some guys you normally play against and some guys you never play against. It’s just a whole new scene,” Brake said. “You also get to see how other players play and even the other teams and the different standards that they have.”
Vanderheide agreed. “You’re playing pretty much against the best of the best out of the high schools that join in and that helps you out even more so it’s really good,” said the MVP of the 2016 bantam Sherwood Park Rams, the Tier 1 provincial champions. “It makes us better with time and it gets us into condition when we get into spring training.”
As for the similarities or differences between the midget spring football and the metro Edmonton league – Bellerose is a division one Carr conference team, although that might change with no head coach in place with the departing Chad Hill in charge of the Sturgeon football program, while the Skyhawks and Paul Kane compete in the division two Miles conference – Vanderheide said: “You can’t explain it really. Midget ball is a separate feeling. You’ve got to play it to feel it.”
The midget spring league opener is traditionally the first time players huddle up outside after training indoors.
“It’s definitely crazy, especially when you start in the gym and then you step on the field but you’ve just got to play and you’ve got to know what you do. We practice for a reason, right?” Brake said.
As for the Storm’s third victory in four games, “It wasn’t a typical performance, not at all. We took some dumb penalties but you win some, you lose some and we’ll bounce back stronger for next week (against the Battle River Shock on April 29 at 10:30 a.m. at the Millwoods turf field),” said Vanderheide, 16.
Previous results were 30-0 against the Fort McMurray Ravens, 33-18 against the West Edmonton Raiders and last Saturday’s 36-16 loss to the Lloydminster Red Dogs. All three games were played at Fuhr Sports Park in Spruce Grove.
“Even though we lost that game (to last year’s top midget team) it was still our best. We held in there, we grinded it out and that’s all that matters,” said Vanderheide, a Team Alberta player at the 2017 Football Canada U16 Western Challenge.
Parkland opened the scoring in the second quarter with a seven-yard TD catch in the corner of the endzone after starting the drive from the Storm 31.
The Storm answered with a lighting-fast 63-yard drive with quality runs by Vanderheide and Brett Yost, capped off by Yost’s 11-yard TD with 59 seconds left in the half.
The game-breaker was Adam Rafat’s stupendous 93-yard catch and run in the third quarter to break the tie.
“He made a hell of a play. I just threw it up for him and he zoned it out and played the ball,” Vanderheide said of Rafat’s TD.
Before the quarter ended, the elusive Brake returned a punt 75 yards to the house.
“I had a lot of good blocks. It was great. It really opened up the lane,” said Brake, who is remarkably similar in size and skill as a former slippery Bellerose speedster, Seth Waselenchuk. “I was dogged, really tired when I scored. It was a crazy run.”
Brake, 16, set up his second TD of the match, a winding four-yard run, after pulling off a nifty catch as Vanderheide threaded the needle on a third down play in Parkland territory early in the fourth quarter.
“I really wanted to get in bad and there were a lot of good blocks by our guys,” Brake said.
Overall, it was an interesting showing by the Storm despite the parade of penalties and surprisingly high number of turnovers.
“We took a lot of unnecessary penalties but we'll work through that,” Brake said. “We came out a little slow today but once we got going we kept pushing and kept our foot on the gas and never stopped.”
The explosive Brake will turn on the jets as one of Sturgeon’s main offensive threats in the division three Gilfillan conference. He is also among a projected 16 student athletes from Sturgeon who played at Bellerose last year that are eligible to line up with the Spirits.
Hill, the face of Bulldogs Football for several years, will coach the Spirits.
“I’m so excited. I can’t wait. It’s going to be a completely different ball game playing with completely new players from Sturgeon that didn’t play at Bellerose. We're playing in div three so it's completely different teams that we’ve never ever seen before. It's completely new players with different skills. It’s going to be great,” Brake said. “Chad won coach of the year two times and for having a great coach to come out like that is great. It's really going to help all the new guys because a lot of our Sturgeon players that didn't play at Bellerose probably have never even touched a football before.”
