Everything is in place for the Chestermere Chiefs to add a bantam team to their program. Now they just need more players.
By Feb. 2, the Chiefs will need at least 25 players to move forward with the bantam team this spring. As of now, they are short, so they are actively recruiting athletes that were born between 2003 and 2005 but who aren’t going in Grade 10.
Two years ago, the Chiefs started added a peewee team to their atom one and it has been a success. Chris Bailey was the atom coach for three years and has led the peewee team for two seasons but will take over the bantam team if it goes ahead.
“The hope is we start the team now and over the spring and summer we can recruit all the kids,” said Bailey, who played university football with Simon Fraser before coaching there as well.
“We’re recruiting lots of young kids for atom and then they move up to peewee and bantam. We can keep the cycle going. The key is to have all those things in place so they have teams to continually go to. It’s been working well.
“We did the same thing for the peewee team two years ago when we started from scratch. It was a big learning curve. We have enough kids to start that up. We improved our win count and added more players. It does work. It’s just a lot of legwork to get the kids involved.”
Over the past few years, players graduating from peewee would either head to Strathmore or various other programs in northeast Calgary to play bantam. The challenge for Bailey and the Chiefs board is get those kids to come back after they’ve spent a season with that team.
There are many benefits of staying in Chestermere to play bantam, but football teams are like a family and it’s not easy to leave once they’ve gone through a season with one.
“Once they get rooted with a team and like the coach, having put in a year, it’s hard to pull them back,” Bailey said. “The tough part is the kids we’ve lost we’re having a bit of trouble getting them back. There are some kids that will come back to the program but the 10-12 kids we lost last year mostly won’t come back.”
The Chiefs coaches have been holding a power, speed and agility training session on Friday nights at the Chestermere Recreation Centre with the hopes of getting kids involved in other sports to improve their skills and get interested in football.
Bailey believes football can help make young athletes more well-rounded and can be beneficial for other sports.
“I grew up playing all sports,” Bailey said. “I played football in the fall and basketball in the winter. You do everything all the time. It’s totally beneficial to play multiple sports.
“It was Wayne Gretzky who said kids should play more than one sport to be a good athlete. Everybody should take his word as gospel.
“My son plays soccer as well and it’s noticeable when he comes to football how good his feet are. It’s because he uses his feet all the time in soccer.”
