AFL – Seawolves football club venturing to Maine

Barry Ogden (Photo)
SAINT JOHN – The University of New Brunswick Saint John Seawolves club football team will kick off their second gridiron campaign with a trip to the Port City’s unofficial sister city.

The Husson University Eagles football team, based in Bangor, Maine, will welcome the Seawolves for an exhibition game Sept. 12.
The Seawolves were one of three teams in the Atlantic Football League, the Maritimes’ latest university-level gridiron circuit, which held its inaugural season last fall.
Team president and general manager Barry Ogden said the trip to New England will be a great way to open the season while spreading word about the fledgling league.
“It gives us credibility because it’s exposure and it gives our players a bonding experience that they’ll remember all their lives,” said Ogden, who spearheaded the AFL’s creation.
The Seawolves travel to Bangor on Sept. 11 and will watch the Husson Eagles varsity team play in the evening. The following day, UNBSJ will square off against the Eagles’ junior varsity squad.
Ogden said the exhibition date has been in the works for about a year. He had hoped to play Husson last season but the venture was sidelined when the Seawolves confirmed an exhibition contest against the McGill University’s junior varsity side in Montreal last October.
Ogden said the team will not be traveling to McGill this season, though he didn’t rule out another trip in the future, but added he’s looking to make the Husson-Seawolves contest an annual event.
In 1984, Ogden took the Saint John High School Greyhounds football team to New England for a game against the Bangor High School Rams.
“I still have people in their 40s come up and talk to me about that, it’s something they’ve remembered their whole lives.”
Ogden said he wanted to create a similar experience for the Seawolves, whose players are 18 to 24 years old, so last fall he contacted Gabby Price, who had been involved with Bangor High athletics in the 1980s and had since moved to Husson University.
The Husson Eagles football program was scraped in the 1930s and it was Price who restored the team in 2002.
“One of the reasons (Price) started it was to give local kids more of a chance to play and that’s the same reason we started (the Atlantic Football League),” Ogden said.
The Eagles play in the Eastern Collegiate Football Conference, where they went 3-3 last season. The Seawolves finished runners-up in the AFL last fall, suffering their only loss of the season to the University of New Brunswick Fredericton Red Bombers in the championship game.
The Moncton Junior Raiders rounded out the three-team loop in 2009. Ogden said there is a possibility the league will expand for the 2010 campaign, with organizers in Charlottetown and Halifax showing strong interest in forming a team, but he declined to comment any further.
He expects the 2010 AFL regular season to begin in mid-September.

Source: Telegraph Journal
[URL]http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/sports/article/977737