It might not be football season yet, but with St. Paul’s Bengals hosting a jamboree at the local field on Saturday morning, fans and supporters got a taste of the competition to come this fall.
St. Paul has hosted similar jamborees for the past five or six years, according to head coach Todd Tanasichuk. While in the past, three or four teams have made it out to the event, this Saturday, the Bonnyville Bandits were the only team that took part.
“There’s too much baseball, there’s too much soccer, there’s just too many other things going on right now,” said Tanasichuk, explaining the smaller size of this year’s event.
However, for the two teams that did come out, it was a good morning to have some friendly rounds of straight offence versus defense plays, with no score clock or pressure, and with the day focused on player development. Each side had 10 plays to practice offence, followed by switching to the other side of the ball for 10 plays on defense.
“They’re learning the game, they’re learning the fundamentals. Football’s a progressive sport,” noted Tanasichuk.
While the jamborees are not about keeping score, the first part of the morning saw a “starters versus starters” portion, with Bonnyville having a bit of an edge over St. Paul, according to Tanasichuk. He attributed the slight difference in play to the fact Bonnyville has been practicing for four or five weeks, while the St. Paul team has only been practicing together for the past two weeks.
“They looked a little crisper than we did, but I think we still matched up very well with them, our top 20 against their top 20.”
The other challenge is that some of the younger players still are learning the fundamentals of the game, as he explained, “Some were very green – some were very small.”
With players aged 11 to 15, the range of sizes on the team is huge, from 75 lbs., to 260 lbs., said Tanasichuk. The challenge is to make sure that everyone gets a chance to play and improve, but that no one gets hurt, he said.
Bonnyville does have a peewee team, which does help teach even younger players the sport, but thus far, Tanasichuk said he has been leery of starting such a program in St. Paul, particularly with the risk of concussions to younger players in the contact sport.
Being on the bantam team gives all interested players a few years to develop, and when they graduate to the Lions, they have a chance to play more competitively then, he said. In the meantime, the Bengals will progressively close the gap with teams like Bonnyville as they train for the regular season, he said.
“No kids got hurt, we had some fun – it was a good day,” he said, adding, “I like the look of our team and I think we’re going to be able to compete against anyone in the league.”
