At least two schools of thought are emerging on what football programming in Kamloops should look like for players ages 14 to 18.

The South Kamloops Titans are the only high school in town that features a senior gridiron program this year, with the Valleyview Vikings and Westsyde Blue Wave having folded after the 2018 B.C. Secondary Schools Football Association campaign.

article continues below

Mike Harrison, a Kamloops Community Football Society board member and vice-president of the junior Kamloops Broncos, has become the voice of an idea that is expected to begin taking shape in the fall of 2020.

Kamloops Community Football, which already has nine-man-tackle atom, peewee and junior bantam teams that play in the Southern Interior Football Conference, will begin offering nine-man bantam programming for players ages 14 and 15.

The bantams will be coached by KCF bench bosses and likely toil in the Lower Mainland-based Valley Community Football League.

The goal is to also offer a 16- to 18-year-old midget program, still run under the KCF umbrella, but with coaching coming from the junior Kamloops Broncos’ organization. Harrison said the nine-man midget outfit can take to the field next year if enough players sign up to play.

“There just seems to be a paradigm shift right now, where things are moving toward a different process that is a little bit more inclusive,” Harrison said.

“With Kamloops, for example, getting down to only one high school that really has a full program for all four years, the rest of the city is excluded right now. If you live in North Kamloops, there is no place to play.

“Our ultimate goal is to provide community football for kids from the ages of eight to 18 and then continue on to the age of 22 with the Broncos.”

Scheduling decisions cannot be made yet, but Harrison said the VCFL has indicated flexibility and he expects road games to be played no farther away than Chilliwack.

Should the SIFC create bantam and midget nine-man leagues, Harrison said the Kamloops teams would have to consider joining.

Harrison wants to be clear: “We don’t want to be stealing anybody from high school. That’s not our mission. We want to provide a place for kids who don’t have a high school.

“Instead of graduating from community football in Grade 8 and maybe having a place to play, probably not, now we’ll have a program for the next five years for those kids, which actually overlaps the Broncos age by one year.”

JP Lancaster runs the senior team at South Kam, which has experienced growth since he took the head coaching reins three years ago and is poised to reach the playoffs in 2019.

“I worry about a fall midget league if Kamloops is too small of a market to support that,” said Lancaster, noting he is all for spring midget football.

Lancaster cited experience coaching at Hugh Boyd secondary in Richmond.

“Every year, we were losing a couple of key guys to the midget team and it kind of watered things down,” Lancaster said. “Hugh Boyd has since folded their program.

“I’m kind of skeptical of it.”

The culture aspect is also a concern for Lancaster, the potential vanquishing of longstanding rivalries, the clashes under the lights that create long-lasting memories.

“I have hope that Westysde and Valleyview will be back,” said Lancaster, noting his Titans make fundraising a year-round endeavour. “They have the infrastructure. They have the assets.

“At Westsyde, they have this beautiful new football room that Wrabel Brothers Construction built. They’ve got the culture there, they’ve got kids at the junior level.

“Valleyview, the biggest school in the city, they’re going to get that facility upgrade in the next few years. They just need the right people.”

Football at any level does not work without dedicated coaches and organizational backing.

Harrison said KCF is set up for success at the bantam and midget levels.

“The benefit of the Broncos board and the community board is they are boards that sit 12 months of the year, non-profit societies who have access to funding,” Harrison said, noting dollars raised go toward coaching, trainers and equipment.

“In high school, in recent years, football doesn’t really get addressed until the start of the school season. They really have a hard time getting access to cash.

“It’s nothing derogatory against high school, but it’s a system that’s probably not going not be around for much longer. All the programs seem to be turning toward the community model as it’s more inclusive.”

Cory Bymoen put in a long shift, about 15 years’ worth of coaching at Valleyview and Westsyde. He led the Blue Wave last season, but quit the gig following the campaign. He has kids of his own at home to keep him busy.

The Westsyde secondary teacher is admittedly biased toward the high school system, but sees pros and cons on both sides.

Bymoen is a huge fan of playing with fewer numbers per side and said Westsyde would likely have a senior team this year if the provincial high school system, a dinosaur in his book, would do away with the 11-man format. American rules are enforced in B.C. high school football.

“If they would just adopt eight-man football in the province, a lot of these issues would just go away,” said Bymoen, who also thinks CFL rules should be administered in high school, as they are in the community football ranks.

“In B.C., we’re behind. They do it in Washington state. They do it in every state. They’ve been doing it in the Prairies. I really believe in eight-man, reduced numbers. There is nothing wrong with it. It’s still football. It’s fear of the unknown.”

Bymoen commended Lancaster and his coaching staff for work done with the Titans — who practised in the off-season — and noted teams that want to be competitive in the provincial high school ranks must train year-round “unless you want to get embarrassed. For me, I can’t devote that time and energy it takes anymore. JP is doing a good job.”

Bureaucratic issues that come along with coaching at the high school level add to required time commitment. Bymoen said community football coaches have an advantage in that area.

“They don’t have to deal with, ‘Jonny was a bad boy today. He won’t be at practice,’” Bymoen said. “This stuff is out the window with community guys. I know a lot of them are quite thankful. Less paperwork, less administrative stuff.”

Bymoen agrees with Lancaster in a few areas.

“I can tell you this: when there’s a Friday Night Lights game at this school, nothing unites this school like that game,” Bymoen said. “I don’t think they can replicate that in community football. I can’t see that energy and that sense of community.

“And, the big thing is, with community football, is it will turn into a competition for talent and players if they want to go ahead with one high school program in town and everyone else in community.

“These people are putting time into it, too, so they want the best players they can have out there to be the most successful. It starts to turn into recruiting wars, which is silly when you’re talking about 15- and 16-year-old boys, but it does. It will happen.”

Both Westsyde and South Kam have fledgling junior varsity programs, the Blue Wave championed by coaches Braden Vankoughnett and Joe Liberatore and the Titans run by Darryl Chow and Brad Yamoaka, among others.

“Football is definitely not dead at Westsyde,” Vankoughnett said, noting he expects both the junior and senior teams to boast rosters of about 30 players next year. “It’s just a weird year based off a grade or two that doesn’t have a lot of numbers.

“This year is just an anomaly. There will be a varsity team next year, just based on numbers and interest in the school.”

South Kam boasts about 30 on its junior team.

Vankoughnett is leaning toward coaching the seniors at Westsyde in 2020, but has to sort out career commitments before signing on.

The Winnipeg product, also a defensive coach for the junior Broncos, said community football and high school football can co-exist, as they do in his Manitoba hometown.

“If Westyde gets a team back, that’s great,” Vankoughnett said. “We’d have two teams in Kamloops, but what are the kids at other schools doing who want to potentially play football? They can’t.

“As far as I know, you aren’t allowed to transfer for a semester to play football. And you risk sitting out a year to go play for another high school. I don’t think that’s fair.

“High school is definitely the preferred route, but there needs to be spots for these kids to play.”

Vankoughnett noted there are four or five junior Broncos who toiled for community football squads until they were 14, but did not have anywhere to play during high school years.

“They come out at 18 on the Broncos, and there are some good athletes, but they are four years behind everyone else,” he said.

One sentiment shared by all who spoke to KTW: It should be all about the kids and what is best for them.

“The egos need to step aside,” Bymoen said. “They need to decide what’s best for football.

“As long as they can find an agreement and all work in the name of the kids, that’s really what this should be for. But they all have different ideas.”