A new football league in the area teaches the fundamentals of the game without the physical aspects.
This is the first year for the Overdrive Tiny Techs, a atom flag football team, and so far, the program has received positive feedback from the community.
“It’s been amazing,” noted Robbie Cole, organizer and coach.
Cole and his wife started the local flag football league after discussing the subject at a bantam football meeting. The sport is open to boys and girls aged nine to 11-years-old.
“We had 61 kids that registered. We have eight teams, split into four teams that are nine and 10-year-old and four teams where there’s seven to eight-year-olds. We split that into two separate little leagues, and what we did is we have every team with seven to eight players on it. We run five versus five football, so most kids are on the field at the same time,” detailed Cole.
The idea of starting a league came from Cole’s son’s interest in football.
“I have an eight-year-old boy, and he’s been around football his whole life... I’ve coached the bantam program here for seven years now...The last two years he’s been bugging me. He wanted to play, and he can’t play peewee until he’s 10,” explained Cole.
Flag football gives kids the chance to learn the basics of the game, while getting them interested in the sport, and keeping them active.
Cole said, “It gets kids into it at a young age, and it’s going to teach the fundamentals of football without the big snap at the end... It also allows girls and boys to play.”
The field is divided up into four sections for games, with all eight teams playing at the same time.
“There’s no sitting and waiting. In football, you have three downs and you have to make 10 yards to get first down. In flag football, what you do is you have five shots at it. You can score five times in a row, but you start on the 30-yard line and work your way toward the goal line,” Cole detailed.
Each team has a head coach and a player from the Bonnyville Voyageurs as an assistant coach to teach the kids the rules of the sport.
The six-week program runs every Saturday at Walsh Field, starting with a warm-up. Teams go through various stations, including passing, catching, flag pulling, and footwork drills.
“We run through them 10 minutes per station, and then we go into two 20-minute games,” Cole said.
Deklan Jackson is an eight-year-old player who knew from the start that flag football was going to be enjoyable. He has learned a lot in his short-time on the team.
“It’s been really fun. My favourite parts have been meeting new people and having practices,” he said, adding he plans to keep playing in order to improve his catching and throwing techniques.
The team will have a bit of a change to their usual Saturday morning practice on Sept. 29. They’ll start the day off for the Scott MacDonald Memorial Tournament at noon.
The league hits the field every Saturday morning until Oct. 13, when they have a final practice and game to wrap-up the season.
