The dawn of the new era kicked off last week for the Sturgeon Spirits in high school football.
The spring camp signalled the start of Sturgeon’s inaugural metro Edmonton gridiron season in the division three Gilfillan conference.
“We’re really excited to have our own team,” said Zach Roberts, a Grade 11 defensive end and one of 15 Sturgeon student athletes who played for the junior or senior Bellerose Bulldogs last year.
“We can show Sturgeon has good players. We’re good at rugby as a school but we’ve never showed what we can do in football because you’re with Bellerose, it’s not your own team, but now we have our own team so it’s a lot better. We can show how good we are,” added Roberts, a prop in rugby who was joined by a number of his rucking and mauling teammates at the spring camp.
The formation of the football Spirits ended a lengthy association as a feeder school for the Bellerose football program.
In addition to the Sturgeon players who huddled up as Bulldogs, former Bellerose head coach Chad Hill will guide the Spirits in the team’s expansion year.
Hill stepped down as the face of Bulldogs Football on March 5 after 10 years as head coach of the senior team. The Bellerose teacher was also in charge of the junior team from 2005 to 2014.
The 2016 and 2017 Metro Athletics Coach of the Year in the division one Carr conference was the successful applicant to coach the Spirits and was also brought on board to teach at the Namao-based school starting this fall.
“It’s so exciting. This week has been great so far,” said Hill on day two of spring camp Wednesday. “(Tuesday) night to have over 40 kids dressed in equipment and to have over 50 registered to start the spring camp it’s definitely exceeding expectations as far as the interest and now it’s putting it all together.
“We have some veterans that have played some real high level football and we have just a tremendous group of young rookies coming in that are very raw and new to football so it’s our job as coaches to get them ready for the fall.”
Practically everybody on Hill’s coach staff at Bellerose provided instruction at the week-long spring camp. Even the photographer for the football Bulldogs was snapping pictures of the Spirits.
There was no shortage of enthusiasm with the excitable Jack Hanna, a former Bulldog and 2017 Canadian Junior Football League All-Canadian offensive lineman with the Edmonton Huskies, pumping up the volume as one of the many football teachers distributing words of wisdom.
“I’m very, very fortunate to have so many good people – coaches and former players being guest coaches. We’ve got current Huskies, Wildcats and Golden Bears all here lending a hand that are former Bulldogs and it’s just great to see them out here,” said Hill, a Bellerose high school alumni and former St. Albert Storm player.
Wednesday’s player tally of 53 included a few sidelined with injuries from pre spring-camp sporting ventures.
“We expected 25, 30 and we’ve got 50 plus here,” Roberts said. “It’s a lot more fun knowing everybody because you go to school with them instead of going to Bellerose where you don’t know everybody.”
Sturgeon will compete for the Gilfillan Cup against the Eastglen Blue Devils, Beaumont Bandits, Holy Trinity Trojans, Ardrossan Bisons and Fort Saskatchewan Sting, the defending champions.
“Obviously we’ve never played as a team before so It’s just going to be a lot harder to figure everything out and get everything going and going in the right direction,” said Roberts, last year's recipient of the junior Bulldogs' 2017 most improved player award. “We just have to keep going at it. At Bellerose we practised every day and we’ll probably keep doing that here. We have to make sure we’ve got everybody practising because a lot of these kids have never played. There is probably 15 of us who have actually played before and another 40 of us that haven’t and you need everyone to be able to play because you need subs so it’s going to be hard to get everybody trained and ready to go.”
Sept. 13 debut
Sturgeon has three jamboree/exhibitions lined up before the official season–opener Sept. 13 against Ardrossan at 7:30 p.m. at Larry Olexiuk Field, the first of three home games in a row in St. Albert.“I’m sure there will be a lot of people at our games supporting our team because it’s the first year Sturgeon has a team and we want to show them what we’ve got,” Roberts, 16.
It’s shaping up to be a daunting task regardless of how many former Bulldogs are on the roster and how many Bellerose coaches have followed Hill to Sturgeon.
“Basically we’re starting from scratch, like ordering more equipment in because of these numbers. There is not just a reserve pile of equipment ready to go,” said Hill, who gave a big shout-out to Rob Strecker, head coach of the division two Miles conference Paul Kane Blues, for loaning the team about 12 shoulder pads to accommodate the higher than expected turnout for the spring camp.
“There are also families that are new to football so it’s going to be very much a learning process for everybody about how high school football works,” Hill added. “I guess the fortunate thing is we’re lucky we’ve got 15 of these boys that have played for this coaching staff before and they’ve played high school football and they understand our philosophies and what it’s all about.
“At spring camp it’s not only important teaching the Xs and Os, it’s also important to be instilling our philosophies and our outlook on the game and really teaching all these young athletes that there is a lot more than football than wins and losses. It’s the values that go into playing, whether it’s one, two or hopefully three years of high school football for most of these kids, which far outweighs wins and losses in a column.”
Hill distributed condensed playbooks to the players that were not as thick or complicated as the ones used last year at Bellerose as the senior Bulldogs (7-4) qualified for their first Carr final, recorded their first Tier I (1,250-plus students) provincial playdown win and competed in their first Tier I north final in team history during an injury-marred campaign.
“I’ve told all the kids don’t get intimidated by this, don’t worry about this right now. We’re going to skim the surface in spring camp but we're going to teach you the basics so when we start off again in August we'll be able to hit the ground running having a week of football experience,” Hill said. “And in all honesty, out of the 53 players that are registered not all 53 will come back in August. My hope is all 53 come back but that’s why we run a spring camp. For a lot of these kids they're trying football for the first time and it’s not for everybody. I’m not naive, I know that, but this gives them a little taste of football, a taste of our expectations and what it’s like to be out here on the field."
To put it mildly, Hill is gung-ho about putting his fingerprints all over a brand new football program.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun this season and it's great for these guys to say that they’re on the first ever team for their school. I told them (Tuesday) you’re making history tonight. It's the first ever Sturgeon football practice. This whole year is going to be about firsts,” Hill said. “We’ll learn as we go but the expectations here are honestly the expectations that we’ve had with the other program too. We’re going to work hard and winning will take care of itself if we do the little things right that we’re suppose to do. We’re going to work hard every day, we're going to take football serious but we're going to have fun as we do it. We're going to compete in every game and when all is said and done we will do the best we can do for a first year team.”
Hill is confident the positive vibes from spring camp will flow into the main camp in August.
“The attitude out here has been great. A lot of the kids you can really tell they want to learn, they’re excited about this and the veterans and their enthusiasm is pretty contagious,” Hill said. “You can feel the excitement. You feel it in the building. We were in there for the awards night (Monday) and people were excited to have football in their school and as a teacher who is going to be in that building in the fall and a football coach that’s just so exciting for me. It gives me lots to look forward to.”
