Kamloops football minds talk high school numbers shortage, pigskin problems

Lancaster said failed attempts to revive football at Valleyview secondary in recent years are, in part, to blame for both the Vikings and Titans folding football programs this season.

South Kam and Valleyview nixed their junior programs before the Titans quashed their senior team this week, unable to meet minimum-player requirements.

Lancaster said Valleyview-catchment students who could have sought B.C. School Sports (BCSS) transfers and played for the Titans did not, so both programs are suffering.

“It’s history repeating itself in the landscape of Kamloops football in that there was too many teams and not enough players,” Lancaster said. “When we moved in the ’90s away from the big senior secondary schools like Kam High to every school being [Grade] 8 to 12, my coaches at that time were saying there would be a day of reckoning. In 2013, we talked about this exact same situation, where Valleyview and South Kam were splitting numbers and ultimately Valleyview folded.”

Valleyview principal Walt Kirschner – who participated in high school football in Kamloops in the 1980s – responded to Lancaster’s take.

“To JP’s point, we’re [Grade] 8 to 12 schools and just like most in British Columbia tasked with providing a program within,” Kirschner said. “Back in the old days when those kids fed from junior high to Kam High, well, it’s a completely different model and their numbers were that much more healthy or because of that. It was Valleyview junior, John Peterson junior, Sa-Hali junior and they fed into the Grade 11-and-Grade 12-only Kam High. I think what Coach Lancaster reflects to is back in the ’80s and even into the early 90s. We were a different model of the school system.”

Kirschner and Vikes’ junior varsity associate head coach Reid Lougheed said the Valleyview junior team was expecting to field about 25 players this season, but was decimated when more than 10 of them jumped ship to play for the Kamloops Community Football bantam team.

Those teams share an age group and programming overlaps, so players had to pick one or the other.

“The community program was formed to give displaced kids [whose high schools don’t have football programs] a chance to play football, not to take players away from already existing high schools [with football programs],” Lougheed said.

Kamloops Community Football Society president Melisa Dyck emailed a statement to CFJC.

“This is not about community football versus high-school football,” Dyck said. “These programs serve different-but-complementary roles in the development of young athletes. Our bantam program was established because there were young athletes in our community who did not have access to a high-school football program. That need has not gone away. Community football has always been about one thing: giving kids a place to belong, to learn, to grow and to play the game they love.”

Concerned football parent Christel Warner – who has also been a trainer in the high school and community football ranks – said BCSS rules on student-athlete transfers and eligibility are stringent and playing a major role in the numbers crunch in Kamloops.

“To be eligible to play on a team, students must attend the school that has the football program,” she wrote in an email to CFJC. “This leaves students out of the catchment area without an opportunity to play. Student transfers from school to school in the Kamloops area are rarely (if ever) accepted, especially if it is for sports-related reasons. The issue within School District 73 is cited as the schools being too full to accept students that are out of the catchment area … this leaves dozens of children who want to play football without a place to do so.”

Warner said BCSS rules that make sense on the Coast do not always equate to good governance in the Interior – and they need to be reviewed.

“These blanket rules currently in place are not working and are killing sport opportunities for our young athletes in our smaller community school systems,” she said.

Lancaster said fewer teacher-coaches on staff at high schools, football losing cultural relevance in town and an, “impasse between the philosophy of community football (grassroots, everyone gets to play) versus high school (competitive, pursuit of excellence),” are among local pigskin problems.

He was among several sources who noted numbers problems are not unique to Kamloops, citing examples from this week, with both Nanaimo secondary and Windsor secondary of North Vancouver folding their senior programs.

“We’re trying to figure out solutions that maybe can move football in Kamloops forward, and one of the things is maybe reducing the numbers to 9-man,” South Kam athletics director Corey Yamaoka said. “Some things have been put out there, but we have to go through B.C. School Sports.”

Lancaster said the formation of a mixed Kalamalka-W.L. Seaton football program in Vernon is causing similar problems to the ones in Kamloops and hurting numbers at Vernon and Clarence Fulton secondary schools.

“Kal-Seaton is pulling kids from both programs and hollowing everything out, just like Valleyview and bantam here,” Lancaster said, noting Fulton folded its junior varsity program this season.

South Kam senior team head coach Teagan Norrish is among multiple sources who told CFJC parental concerns over head injuries are contributing to shrinking roster sizes.

“In media and the news, it’s been covered more heavily in the past 10 to 15 years and that could be a deciding factor,” Norrish said. “I think football’s only gotten safer, with the regulations and equipment that’s been improved on. I would say it’s safer than 10 or 20 years ago. They’re changing tackling techniques.”

Norrish said studies suggest some French immersion schools have struggled with athletics registration. Yamaoka said that is not the case at South Kam.

Only the Whundas remain, with Westsyde – which has had its own numbers issues in recent years – to field junior and senior teams this season.

Westsyde director of football Cleve Maartman said it is long past time for competing programs to come together to find solutions.

“I don’t want to look at it as it’s the kids’ fault that we’re not getting a lot of kids out,” Maartman said, noting the importance of forming booster clubs at schools. “It’s not about the kids. I believe strongly, and our coaching staff has sat and talked about it – it’s about a culture that we have to build. It’s our job as coaches, adults and community members to build it for the kids.”

Maartman said he does not want to cast blame – and he is taking a look in the mirror.

“First of all, I’ll tell you right now, I was going, ‘Oh, right on, South Kam folded!’ because we’re the last team,” he said. “That’s not what I want to think about. Then I was mad at myself that I didn’t go reach out and help them more. It’s not about winning seasons or losing seasons – it’s about having a season.”

Both Valleyview and South Kam intend to revive football at their schools next season. In the meantime, this year’s crop of Titans and Vikes is stuck with a raw deal.

Ben Ford, a Grade 12 Titan, spoke to CFJC at his team’s last practise before it folded.

“The amount of commitment we’ve given … every fall for three months, this kind of is our life,” he said. “To have our season taken away is just disappointing.”

by Marty Hastings

Kamloops football minds talk high school numbers shortage, pigskin problems

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