Andrew Haseldine dropped by Masich Place Stadium a couple weeks ago for his first-ever football practice.
He arrived wearing his jersey and shoulder pads and helmet and introduced himself to the Prince George Kodiaks coaches on the field before he joined Grade 10 buddies from College Heights Secondary School . They practiced their drills in a group of about 40 players signed up for a new academy that promises to radically alter the football landscape in the city.
Haseldine, 16, is fast on his feet and his dedication to lifting weights and working on his cardio left him fit, strong and flexible and he’s eyeing a position with the Kodiaks as a receiver/defensive back. His rugby training got him used to hitting and being hit and he’s hoping the ban on competition and close contact will be lifted when provincial health orders are revised on May 25.
“I played one year of rugby three years ago and I did swimming and quite a bit of volleyball and gymnastics but I quit all those to focus on football and I’ve just been going to the gym for about seven months,” said Haseldine. “I didn’t play rugby too long because swimming took over everything. I was part of the Barracudas and before that, in Williams Lake, I was swimming for the Bluefins.”
Kodiaks coach Tommy Heinzelman, head coach of the Cougars senior team, also teaches at College Heights, and he’s been trying to recruit Haseldine since he was in Grade 8.
“If I like football I want to take it as far as I can,” said Haseldine. “I’m hoping my conditioning pays off.”
Craig Briere, president of the Prince George Kodiaks Football Club, looks forward to seeing more players like Haseldine come out of the woodwork to join their weekly workouts on the turf field at Masich Place Stadium. Briere wants kids to know, whether you’re big or small, tall or short, no matter what you’re body type, there’s a position in football that fits your physical attributes.
“Football is so underserviced in Prince George and it’s vitally needed because so many kids get left out of sport because he’s not tall enough for basketball or volleyball, he’s never played hockey his whole life, and all of sudden in Grade 10 or 11 he comes out for football and man, you can be the star. I’ve got kids who are 300 pounds and I’ve got kids who are 90 pounds.
“It’s the inclusiveness is what’s attractive about it. A lot of these kids played other sports and when basketball or hockey passed them by, football became their sport, and they can play at a junior level or university level and be successful at it.”
The Kodiaks are among 36 clubs now affiliated with the B.C. Provincial Football Association , now in the inaugural year of its province-wide academy program. The 5,400-player provincial organization, through its academies, offers year-round training opportunities for players trying to crack provincial team rosters and also provides training and education for coaches. The BCPFA has added a flag football provincial team program and has applied to make flag football one of the sports in the 2022 BC Summer Games in Prince George.
The academy will keep Prince George players active in football through the winter months at the Northern Sport Centre while they prepare for regional tournaments in the spring which will serve as their auditions for provincial teams.
If health restrictions remain in effect, ruling out travel between health zones, teams from the North will arrange to play the Interior sometime during the spring in a series of round-robin mini games each lasting 25 minutes. A tournament for all the zones in B.C. is tentatively planned for June 19 in Langley. The BCPFA has added a U-14 division to its existing U-18 and U-16 divisions, which makes kids aged 13-18 eligible for the Team BC program.
“The intention is to keep them active, keep them engaged and keep them doing something,” said Briere. “For a high school football player, they lost their season last year, they’ve lost the spring season this year and we don’t know what the future of this fall looks like. Now they’re being recruited for university and junior programs and they need to have film and just be involved.
“High school football is big in Prince George but it doesn’t get enough credence. If you came here on a Friday night there’s five times more people in the stands for a high school game than there is for UNBC soccer game. We’ve done a bad job of marketing our sport and we’re not very well organized as a sport, which is what the Kodiaks are trying to change. We now have football programming 10 months of the year. Before we were doing football two months of the year.”
The BCPFA academy levels the playing field for players from northern B.C. and gives them equal opportunity to make provincial teams. Briere hopes to have Prince George players competing in the interprovincial Canada Cup and Western Challenge tournaments, but that might not happen this year due to the lingering pandemic.
The Kodiaks Elite program replaces the Game Ready Elite 7-on-7 football program that started in Prince George three years ago, and Prince George is part of the newly-formed 7-on-7 Football Association of Canada. The Kodiaks 7-on-7 staged an indoor no-contact league last year at the Northern Sport Centre that was the only football in town in 2020. The club kept up the momentum with its winter practices that started in November and they’ve been outdoors at Masich since mid-April at Masich with 86 players registered. Due to COVID protocols the group had to be split in half with the U-20 and U-18 players practicing separately from the U-16 and U-14 groups.
The Kodiaks have also started a non-contact 7-on-7 league for kids in Grades 2-7which drew about 130 players. The kids practice Monday and Tuesday evenings in the areas of the city closest to where they live – Hart, Bowl or College Heights – and the three groups get together for mini-games on Friday evenings. The season will run until July.
For Jerome Erickson, a Grade 12 student at College Heights Secondary School, the idea of playing football 10 months of the year can’t come soon enough. The pandemic shut down the fall season and he wasn’t able to play his final season with the Cougars . He’s been working out with eh Kodiaks since the fall and the possibility of playing games this summer has him encouraged he’ll be able to put the quarterback’s brain back into use on the field making split-second decisions.
The Cougars were ranked No. 4 in their division before the high school season was cancelled and Erickson never had the chance to see how close his veteran-laden squad would come to a provincial championship. He’d been the starting quarterback of the senior team since in Grade 10.
“It stings,” said Erickson. “Of course, it’s hard.
“Hopefully next year there will be a high school season for the guys.”
Erickson, who also played high school basketball at College Heights, is enrolled in UNBC starting in the fall term but hasn’t ruled out playing junior football in the B.C. Junior Football Conference at some point. The Kodiaks workouts this spring are keeping him involved in football.
“This is just about getting out and getting back to the game, because we can’t’ have a high school season,” he said. “We have field time and we’re playing, so people, the athletic youth, want to be doing something. I’m happy with it.“
