A rural Olds youth has been named to the Football Alberta South all star team.
As a result, Nils Haeni, a defensive end, will be playing in the annual Football Alberta Senior Bowl May 22 at McMahon Stadium in Calgary.
Haeni, 18, lives on a farm east of Olds. He played minor football in Olds but now goes to high school in Didsbury.
The Grade 12 student has been playing football since he was in Grade 5.
"One of my buddies was talking about the Olds Bulldogs and the Huskies -- the bantam and peewee team. He was just telling me how cool it was. Then I started watching it on TV and just fell in love with it," he said during an interview with the Albertan.
Over the years, Haeni has played all kinds of positions, on offence and defence.
"The only thing I haven't really played is quarterback and DB," he says.
Haeni loves many aspects of the game.
"(I love) the hitting, the strategy, the technique," he says. "I don't know how to explain it, but when I step out onto a field, that's where I belong the most, I feel."
His favourite position -- and the one role he's kind of settled on -- is defensive end.
He loves rushing quarterbacks.
And he's managed to sack a few.
"I'd like to get my numbers up, but I have a couple," he says.
Haeni is currently six feet four inches and weighs about 225 pounds.
He hopes to continue playing football, likely at the junior level next year.
"I've been talking to some junior teams in B.C. that would like me to play for them, but I haven't signed a contract or anything yet," he says.
Haeni has also talked to a couple of Canadian universities about joining their teams but so far would prefer to play junior for a while first.
He says his size has been all right in high school, but he figures he'll need more muscle mass to compete at that level.
"I've been going to the gym with my brothers every week, just in Olds at the high school," he says.
Overall, he figures his speed is good, although it could possibly be improved.
"For my position, some of the guys are bigger than me, but I feel like I have a little more speed than some of them," he says. "I've been working on that a lot."
In Airdrie he worked three times a week with a conditioning coach who helped him build up his speed.
