Mitch Calvert
There will be some familiar faces back at the helm when the Muskie football team takes to the field next fall.
There’s been some restructuring among the coaching staff, and Dean Bruyere is spearheading a group of 13 who will run both the high school and junior programs—aimed at developing players earlier and setting up the Muskies for success down the road.
“We felt we had to do something to jump-start interest among kids,” said Fort High athletic director Shane Bliss. “Dean approached us with a package of coaches who wanted to get the ‘B’ program started again, and we’ve talked to Dryden and the teams in Winnipeg, and they have an average of 14 coaches on their staffs, whereas we had about three or four last year,” Bliss added.
“There are so many things to learn, and right now kids are getting their first taste of football at Grade 9 and it’s hard to have success when that’s the case,” he stressed.
Back in 2001, the Muskies finished with a 4-4 in the top tier of the WHSFL, but have declined steadily since, finishing this past regular-season at 2-5 in Tier II.
“You need the junior program in place to have any chance to compete at the next level,” agreed Bruyere. “We’ll use a standard system we’ve always used out of an ‘I’ formation, just what they did this year, but we’ll just simplify it some for the juniors.
“The important thing is keeping the same system from the junior program on up so they are familiar with it when they get to high school,” he explained.
Bruyere and his coaching staff don’t plan to re-invent the wheel, but instead are hoping to slowly get the program back to its winning ways through development and hard work.
“It’s more or less just putting the cart back on the path it should be on,” Bruyere remarked. “We used to have a pretty successful program here. In three-five years, hopefully we’ll be knocking on Winnipeg’s door for a championship, or at least be ready to move up a division.”
Bruyere plans to schedule games between the local ‘B’ team and Thunder Bay’s Bantams, playing a pair of games in Thunder Bay and then having them come here for a pair.
He hopes to have the junior program up and running by mid-August, so they can wrap it up by mid-October and then focus their efforts on the Muskies’ final weeks of the season.
Bruyere admitted the football program has struggled with recruitment all along because too often kids feel it will interfere with hockey or other sports.
“We’re going to go to some of the schools and try to sell the program to the Grade 7s and 8s,” he noted. “I did that a few years ago and it turned out good, got lots of kids interested.
“We have to do that in order to get this program back on its feet,” he stressed.
Bruyere hopes to bring a pair of players, Matt DePiero and Blake Wepruk, who both played hockey and football with no conflicts. He also wants to bring Donny Krishka, a smaller-sized guy who has had little problem competing on the gridiron at the high school level.
Bliss agreed, noting the program’s biggest struggle has been with player recruitment.
“We barely had enough kids to start the season last fall, and in order to avoid a similar situation we thought that we had to make a change,” Bliss said.
“You don’t have a program if you don’t have players, and that’s the first thing we had to address,” he remarked. “In talking to the group of graduating players, most said they wouldn’t have come back if things weren’t changing, and I felt that spoke volumes.
“We have a pretty big student body here that we’re barely tapping with our football team.”
Bliss said the argument that football causes injuries can be applied to any sport, and shouldn’t be a major factor in a player’s decision.
“You could get hurt playing football, but you can get hurt stepping off the curb,” he reasoned. “One of our hockey players fell off the bus and cut his shin open for eight stitches in Brandon, so you just never know.
“It could happen anywhere, so you can’t go around life being worried about getting hurt.”
Bruyere’s list of coaches comes with some significant pedigree, including former head men Bob Swing and Greg Allen. They’ll also be joined by last year’s coaching trio of Andrew George, Lou Gauthier, and Bob Whitburn (Vince Gouin has chosen not to return).
Bruyere also expects to have Chad Canfield (who played college football at Mt. Allison), Jim DePiero, Doug Stein, and Walter “Moose” Prymak helping out in varying capacities.
Bruyere plans to synchronize both the ‘B’ and high school teams on the same field to get the kids practising together as much as possible.
“The Grade 7 and 8s will probably dress at J.W. Walker, and they can come over to the high school and practise on the side field there, and that way we can practise by committee with both,” he explained.
“We’ll try to keep all the kids together as much as possible, but obviously we can’t do everything together, like hitting drills and things like that.”
He also plans to schedule a pre-season jamboree of sorts with the two other Northwestern Ontario teams in the WHSFL, getting together on someone’s field and having controlled scrimmages against the Kenora Broncos and Dryden Eagles.
