Midget spring league football kicks off today for the St. Albert Storm and Garrett Meek is ready to rumble.
“Ever since my high school season ended last year, I’ve been waiting for this. I love football,” said the gregarious six-foot-two and 250-pound Grade 10 lineman.
The jamboree in Spruce Grove starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 12:30 p.m. for the Storm. They play 30-minute controlled scrimmages against the Raiders, Battle River Shock, Parkland Predators, Mustangs and Chargers. Each team gets 12 offensive plays per game. There is no blitzing and a maximum of seven players in the box on defence.
Admission to the Grant Fuhr Centre Football Fields is $5.
It’s the first outdoor session for the Storm after two weeks of training in the Karl Weidle Indoor Centre.
“It will be great, especially for the offence to get its reps in,” said head coach Chad Hill.
League play starts next weekend but the six-team tier 1 schedule has not been finalized by the Capital District Minor Football Association.
About 60 players registered for tryouts. The Storm will dress the league maximum of 45 players in grades 9, 10 and 11. The most Grade 11 players per team is 25 and the minimum numbers of Grade 9 and 10 players are 10.
“We have to make some roster deletions after the jamboree. There are a lot of kids gone for spring break, which makes it even tougher, but I’ve worked out a schedule to make sure all the guys get their fair share of playing time,” Hill said.
“With five games, we’re looking at a minimum of 20 reps per player. We’re going to try to stay away from guys having to play both ways. We want to get everybody on the field and see what they can do so coaches can actually get a real look and evaluate. We have lots of talent and it’s important that they get properly evaluated before we make any decisions for our roster.”
The Storm is made up of players from the St. Albert bantam 49ers and Fury, the Bellerose Bulldogs, St. Albert Skyhawks and the brand-new Paul Kane Blues.
“Midget football is awesome. I love it,” said Meek, a starter last year for the Storm’s 4-2-1 tier II championship team. “It’s guys coming from different schools to become one team. We just go out and have lots of fun.”
Meek, 16, was the Storm’s left tackle, defensive tackle and long snapper in Grade 9, the same positions he played in high school last fall as a starter on the senior team for the Ross Sheppard Thunderbirds.
“It’s a completely different game than bantam. They’re so much bigger and faster,” said Meek, the Fury co-captain for the 2009 provincial tier II finalists. “Spring league helped me a lot. In bantam I could get up and walk around after a game but after the first game in spring league I barely got out of bed. It hurt so much. In high school I was kind of ready for it but it still hurt afterwards.”
Meek was on the radar screen of several high school teams coming out of bantam but decided to play for the Thunderbirds in the Edmonton public league.
“My dad [Mike] went there for high school and he knew the coach [Brian Buchynski] so I went there one day when I had a half day of junior high [at Lorne Akins School] and saw how the school was. I followed some football players around, did the workout they did and went to a couple of classes. It was awesome. That really helped me make my decision.”
Any second thoughts Meek had quickly disappeared during tryouts.
“I was really nervous. I didn’t know what I was going to do and I didn’t know anybody but I tried out and they said you’re pretty good so you can start both ways on senior and you can be our long snapper,” said the team’s defensive rookie of the year. “I was actually quite surprised how well things went. I never really came off the field.”
Even though the Thunderbirds posted only one win in a conference dominated by the Harry Ainlay Titans, the tier I provincial finalists, Meek learned a ton.
“It was a completely different experience. I loved it.”
