INNISFAIL - The Innisfail Minor Football Association (IMFA) has folded two of its gridiron programs.
The atom program will continue on.
Last Thursday (Aug. 30), officials for the association ended its peewee and bantam programs following low player turnouts for the five season-starting practices in late August.
"Our numbers were down in all three, atom, peewee and bantam," said IMFA club manager Alexis Verhegge, noting the end for the two programs came despite encouraging registration numbers leading up to the start of the season.
"We had so much hope a few weeks ago and it's very frustrating to see our numbers on paper and not have the kids show up, and then to try to spread the word and doing what we can. It's frustrating," said Verhegge.
Last week Verhegge said an emergency meeting was planned to deal with the crisis but was cancelled. Another was called later in the week and she said it was decided on Aug. 30 to fold the bantam and peewee teams, which were both at least 10 players short.
As far the atom program, Verhegge said the IMFA will keep it alive as it is the league's base program that feeds into the higher level teams. They had about 10 players show up for their practices last month.
The current low player numbers at the start of the season are seen by IMFA officials as a surprise, because registration numbers were encouraging following the league's emergency spring meeting when the association's fortunes looked at least equally dire. The problem back then was lack of coaches, players and volunteers. But following an emergency meeting on March 28 when the IMFA found itself with a new board and increased numbers of volunteers and coaches, association executive members felt they had successfully averted the crisis, especially when looking at early registration numbers for the 2018 season.
Jana Brazil, the association’s registrar, said last spring 18 kids were required to field an atom team but 21 had already registered. She said 14 kids had registered for peewee, with 25 needed for the new season. The association also had 10 kids registered for bantam, with 25 required to field a team.
If any citizen wants to register their children in the association’s atom program he or she can contact Verhegge at 780-668-8697, or email her at [email protected] or visit www.innisfailminorfootball.com
