Winston Churchill guns for Southern Alberta title

Now that’s a reason to celebrate, a golden one at that. The Winston Churchill Bulldogs football team will be gunning for more than just a Southern Alberta High School Football League title when they hit the gridiron starting Sept. 2 in Claresholm against Willow Creek Composite.

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With Winston Churchill celebrating it’s 50th anniversary, the Bulldogs would love nothing more than to contribute to the festivities already in place for the coming year.

“This year is a big year for us,” said Bulldogs head coach John Dick. “We started in 1960, so we’re having some big 50th anniversary birthday celebrations this year and our first one of the year will be the Alumni Tailgate Party (Sept. 17 against Catholic Central at the University of Lethbridge Stadium).

“We have some pretty good events, cabarets and things like that for a bit later in October and November. It’s nice to start it with the football game and get everybody excited about it.”
But before the festivities fire up, there’s still a bit of preparation to be done as the Bulldogs run through some practice paces before heading to Medicine Hat Saturday for a one-day exhibition/jamboree with Medicine Hat High School and Chinook High School.

“Considering we’ve only had a small amount of practices we’ve been looking really good so far,” said Dick. “We graduated a number of players last year. This year we have quite a strong showing of players that have played in our bantam program. We had 10 to 15 guys show up depending on the day that came from the bantams. So that’s always promising. The numbers have been increasing day-by-day, which is great.”

Grade 12s Tyler Lind, Sayeed Devraj-Kizuk and Evan Shaskin will be expected to provide a veteran role, said Dick.

“Those three guys will provide some leadership on the line and the slotback position.”
Grade 11s Dalton Houghton and Cody Wiersma are second-year players at the running back spot.

“Those guys are going to play a major role for us both on offence and defence,” said Dick.
And there’s also a chance for those numerous rookies to step in assume a starting role by the time the Bulldogs’ Sept. 2 season-opener kicks off.

“We’ve played a number of young guys that are in a position that they can very well start for us right out of the gate going into the first game of the season as well as the exhibition jamboree we’re playing in (Saturday) in Medicine Hat,” said Dick. “It’s nice to get competition against other teams instead of just hitting guys on your team. It’s nice to get out and hit somebody on a different team. It’s definitely a big learning curb and it allows the guys a chance to learn very quickly, some of the guys that haven’t played much in the past. The probably learn more in a game situation than you do over a large amount of practices. You learn a lot in a short period of time when you’re in a game.”

The addition of Chinook High School to the league provides a little more competition city-wide, said Dick.

“(There are) some city rivalries and a new one starting up with Chinook High School coming in this year. We play those guys in our second game of the season (Sept. 10).”