INNISFAIL – The Innisfail Cyclones 9-man high school football team won’t be repeating as Mountain View Conference champions this season.
In fact, there won’t even be a regular season this fall.
“(The season) doesn’t exist. We don’t have a 9-man league to play in per se, so we’re playing exhibition games against teams that are giving us a shot to play exhibition,” said Trevor Wooff, head coach, who is optimistic competitive football and a league will be re-established next season.
Football Alberta is bringing in several changes to minor football starting next season, noted Wooff; changes that will affect roster size and the number of players required to play.
“I thought there’d be more teams that would be interested in doing 9-man (football) this year at the high school level, but the mandate for a minimum roster size doesn’t come in until next fall,” explained Wooff. “So teams that can’t put a roster of 30 bodies on the field will immediately go to a 9-man format or be forced to play 9-man (football) anyways,” he added.
“For safety reasons if you want to play 12-man (football), they’re saying you should have a minimum number of dressed players per game.”
Many of the 12-man high school teams that exist now could drop to 9-man next season once the changes come into effect, said Wooff.
“It’ll depend on how the individual leagues decide how they’re going to do it, because the rules are going to state that if you don’t have a 30-man roster at the start of the game, the game immediately reverts to a 9-man game,” explained Wooff.
The Alberta Schools Athletic Association (ASAA) works with Football Alberta to establish rules and regulations and is currently working to help bring in the changes next season, said Wooff.
“The ASAA is going to develop a 9-man league under their rulings so it’ll become a school-based program, just like 12-man, just like 6-man, instead of what we had with the Mountain View Football Conference, (which) was a community-based program,” he said. “I think in some leagues, you’ll see a 9-man division (in Alberta).”
In the meantime, the Cyclones are playing exhibition games and holding regular practices, including an exhibition game against Lacombe in early September and a recent game against Rocky Mountain House on Sept. 27.
“This is a very young and inexperienced team with a lot of Grade 9s, a lot of Grade 10s and very few Grade 12s,” said Wooff, noting the team has about 17 players on the roster.
The goal this season, said Wooff, is to give these young football players some playing experience and have some fun.
“(We’re practising) three days a week. It’s really just trying to keep these kids interested for the year and then hopefully next year we have more teams and have an actual league to play in,” said Wooff. “So we’re not losing a year of time or shutting down.”
