Mitch Calvert
The Muskie football program will hold its annual spring camp June 22-26 starting at 3:30 p.m. each day—with a different twist this year aimed at generating interest in the sport among elementary students a year or two away from making the jump to high school.
“It will be all Grade 6s, 7s, and 8s,” Muskie coach Dean Bruyere said. “I put posters up in the schools and we’re hoping for a good turnout from the younger kids.
“We will have the high school kids out there doing their own thing, too, but I’m not so worried about them at this point,” he added.
“I’m more concerned with keying interest in those lower grades because that will feed the high school program for the years to come,” Bruyere stressed.
Fort High finished with a 2-5 record in the Winnipeg High School Football League last season, with the bulk of that team’s starters graduating this month.
With that in mind, expectations are subdued for Bruyere and his coaching staff heading into this coming season.
“We’re going to be pretty skinny on numbers this year, [but] we have some guys returning from last year. We’ll just have to take a punch in the nose this year and rebuild,” Bruyere admitted.
“I’m hoping we can at least get somewhere near .500 anyway,” he added. “It’s a pretty high mark to set, but I think we can pull it off.”
Bruyere has a contingent of former coaches and Muskie alumni on his staff, which should help get the program off and running.
“We have some really good coaches, and we were lacking numbers when it came to coaches in year’s past,” he enthused. “I’ve got 16 [coaches] now or close to it, and there’s more guys coming out everyday.”
This year’s spring camp is hoping to generate enough interest from kids in Grades 6-8 in order to field a junior program in the fall.
“The junior program is happening for sure,” Bruyere stressed.
“Once Thunder Bay finishes their schedule for the year, we’ll set some games with them,” he noted.
“We’ll go down there and play a total of four games on one weekend and they’ll come here and play a weekend pair of games, and then maybe we’ll head there one more time for a weekend.”
That game experience, and additional skill development, would give players a significant leg up when they eventually suit up for the black-and-gold during their high school years.
Bruyere also has set a pair of exhibition games with Kenora which will allow the younger players on the Muskie roster to get in some real game action.
“We have a game scheduled in Kenora for our Grade 9s and our Grade 10s who don’t start every game [during the WHSFL season],” Bruyere said. “We will get two full games against Kenora’s younger players because they’ll come here for a game.
“We’ll still squeeze those players in on special teams and hide them within the system when we can throughout the season, as well, but those two exhibition games will give them a chance to play,” he reasoned.
The junior program is expected to start practising a few weeks prior to the start of school in the fall.
