Senior Badgers fold

By Adelle Ellis, Times Reporter

Strathmore Community Football Association (SCFA) announced last week that they would no longer be providing a 9-man senior football program this year.
The SCFA said challenges with the league, limited games and unstable teams in the league made the program unviable for the upcoming season.
“The last season we had was pretty terrible,” said Sean Seafoot, head coach of the senior team. “We didn’t play our first game until Week 5. We had two teams drop out at the start of the season. It turned into a very bad turnout of players… I don’t blame the kids at all because they want to play games, like why would you come to practice for five weeks and not play a game?
“So it was tough … we decided to make the decision to let Strathmore High School (SHS) run the reins of senior football in Strathmore, which is good because Strathmore’s not big enough for two teams in the first place. If Strathmore can get all its football athletes on one team, then maybe Strathmore will have a better season this year.”
The decision was made easier as SHS is now a Tier 2 team, so they could accommodate the players from other schools in the area.
“In the past, they (SHS) weren’t allowed to take kids from Holy Cross Collegiate (HCC) and the surrounding areas like Standard,” said Seafoot. “We started getting more and more HCC kids, so we decided to get away from the ASAA, as they’re more strict on where you can recruit from. More community based, I could grab kids from pretty much anywhere which was nice, that helped out a little bit. In the past they weren’t able to take those kids. SHS did give us in writing that they are going to be able to take HCC kids so that’s good.
“What happened to SHS is they jumped up a tier – in the past they weren’t allowed to take the populations from other schools because then they would jump up to Tier 2, but now they are Tier 2 no matter what, so I think if they are able to take kids from other schools now with the population, it doesn’t bump them up to Tier 1 at all so they might as well get more players.”
According to Travis Gorski, SHS Football Coach, the team will be able to recruit players from Holy Cross Collegiate and Wheatland Crossing School.
“We’ve been working with teachers in the other schools as well just to make it more of a community feel and just bring in that involvement into it,” said Gorski. “I know a lot of the kids play bantam together or lower levels and then they’re forced, because they go to different schools, to play on different high school teams because that’s the way ASAA regulates it, so this will provide an opportunity to continue to play (together).”
With the influx of talent and players, SHS can handle any scenario.
“If our roster did get rather large, we would look at creating a JV team – and there is a JV league, so we would separate a senior and JV squad,” said Gorski.
The SHS Football Spring camp starts June 3. If people want more information they can go on the SHS website and it’s posted under the football page in athletics, or they can email Gorski (travis.gorski@ghsd75.ca) directly.