Via Tim Baines – Ottawa Sun
OTTAWA, Ontario – Before the Carleton Ravens even took the field as part of the college football revival at the university in the fall of 2013, there was a group of youngsters wearing the team’s new logo and colours, the Carleton Junior Ravens Programs.
The Junior Ravens Programs. a program created by the school to expose Ottawa-area kids to the concepts of football began early in 2013. ‘
Now in its seventh season, the program is in high gear – with about 700 kids expected to sign up in 2019 and to expose 10,000 young footballers to the sport by 2025.
It’s quite a story for a spring program that started with 119 kids and now has more than five times that in winter, spring and summer sessions.
The age groups had also expanded – when it began, it was ages eight to 14, now kids as young as four can get involved, and players up to 18 can participate in the high-performance stream. There’s also a Gridiron Girls program.
“We’re trying to create programming for kids of all levels,” said Ravens receivers coach and manager of events and programs Josh Sacobie, a star quarterback for the Ottawa Gee-Gees from 2004-08.
The emphasis is on development, not on seeing what the kids can do against each other in-game scenarios.
“We’re not about games – we don’t play 12-on-12 football, we do 5-on-5 which gets everybody involved,” said Sacobie. “It still covers off the fundamentals of blocking, tackling, catching and throwing. It lets players experience several positions – offence and defence. When you do that, you create a better experience so the kids are more likely to stay involved, and they’re going to seek out league play in the fall.”
What started as a contact program, borrowed from the influential University of Laval’s Mini Rouge et Or concept, has also expanded to include non-contact. The camps were initially Friday, Saturday and Sunday over eight weeks; now, it’s just one session a week – each Sunday. March 3 will be the last session of the eight-week winter program, which had 350 enrolled.
Getting the kids week after week is a benefit, according to Sacobie.
“Doing a camp over an extended period, not just a weekend camp, is where you can work with kids and see the improvement,” he said. “You see the kids on a good day and a bad day. That reveals a lot about them as a person and as an athlete.”
An obvious benefit to having an elite program for local kids is giving them a taste of what the program is all about. Hopefully, recruit them when they become eligible to play college football. The program has provided the Ravens with one of their star players – running back Nathan Carter was a Carleton Junior Raven
“You’re seeing the kids who started with us at age ten and now they’re coming up to be of (college) age,” said Sacobie. “(Nathan) was a kid who caught our eye right away. He was a smaller player at the time, but a hard worker. A lot of schools overlooked him, but we fell in love with his work ethic.”
But that’s not all the Ravens are thinking about.
“We don’t see it all as recruiting,” said Sacobie. “The first experience for a lot of these kids was with Carleton; they remember that. If that helps in the recruiting game in the long run, then great. We want to see kids continuing to play.
We’ve had kids in our camp that have gone to the University of Calgary, University of Ottawa, McMaster, they’ve gone to Quebec schools – that’s great. We’ve had kids who’ve been with us since they were eight, now they’re in our high-performance program and training as 17-year-olds.
“We know football can be a late-development sport – I started playing when I was 14. Some of these kids are starting to play at seven and eight, and they’re staying with it. There are a lot of kids out there who want to try football; we want their first opportunity to be with our program. We’re trying to promote the game and get more kids to play football.”
For some, football has become a year-round thing. But Sacobie believes it’s vital that younger kids get exposure to much more than what happens between the lines of a football field.
“There is a lot of tackle football in Canada,” he said. “Kids can burn out at 15, 16 and 17 because they’re playing way too much tackle football. I’m totally against that. Kids should experience playing other sports and rest their bodies at times.”
Using safe contact tackling techniques that are pushed by Football Canada, the Junior Ravens have broadened the depth of their program with new-age groups and by separating experienced and beginner players.
“It was hard to create a program for the returning athlete and the new athlete, we had to create two streams – an advanced stream and an introductory stream,” said Sacobie. “In Ottawa, there are a lot more opportunities to go into football development, a lot more than there were ten years ago.”
The Carleton Junior Ravens Programs session registration has been launched (for more info, check out https://athletics.carleton.ca/cu-camps/junior-ravens-football) – going for six Sundays (90 minutes each time), from May 12-June 16. For the contact program, the equipment is provided by Carleton.
“I’m impressed every camp at a kid’s ability to pick up the game, from throwing and catching a football to putting the pads on,” said Sacobie.
“We try to instill the confidence to play a contact sport, a lot of people skip over that in the way they introduce football.
By following a strict progression with Football’s Canada’s safe contact model and try and cover that off in all of our practices.
We believe in safety first, and kids are having fun while trying to be a champion in the community promoting football.
“We’re always learning, always growing. Trying to learn how football is changing, which is why we’re introducing non-contact programs for boys and girls.
When you deal with this many athletes each year, you get to see all the positive things football does for young people. I guess that’s why we keep doing it.”
Monday, March 4, 2019 in General, News
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