SRSS football program looking to improve on winless season

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This article was published 11/09/2023 (649 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The 2022 season may have ended with zero wins for the Steinbach Regional Secondary School Sabres football, but the team is expecting to improve in the coming season.

With an expanded amount of teams playing at the highest level, the path to a playoff berth for Steinbach may have opened up, according to head coach Stephen Fedus.

“It’s actually pretty exciting to see,” Fedus said, noting he was looking forward to seeing more athletes exposed to top-level talent across the province.

“I think the exposure to the top teams in the league for everyone, will help bring up the level of football. I think it’s also going to create opportunities for more competitive games throughout the league.”

Eight of the province’s top 24 teams will make the post-season tournament in the new format.

“Our goal is to get into the playoffs and then see what happens,” Fedus said.

“Short-term wise, we want to get better each week. And it starts with increasing the amount of consistency.”

Steinbach looked good during their pre-season game Aug. 31, defeating the Springfield Sabres 25-6 at A.D. Penner Park in the clash of the Sabres. After coming up empty in 2022, even winning a pre-season game meant something to the program.

It was a strong first half for Steinbach, as they jumped out to a 24-0 lead in the first half, but Springfield out-played their Sabres counterparts in the second half, winning it 6-1.

“Winning is always nice,” Fedus said with a chuckle.

“It’s a good feeling, the kids haven’t had it for a while. A lot of the kids here, they deserve it, they worked really hard during our training camp, and they deserve the good result today.”

Fedus added this year’s training camp showed a lot of improvement compared to last year’s. The Steinbach program hadn’t fielded a football team during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning the 2022 team was working to re-establish itself.

“We still have a bit of a ways to go from where we were program-wise (in 2019),” Fedus said.

“We have to make sure do a little bit of a better job in the summer staying in shape, but we’ll work on that as the program continues to grow.”

Steinbach will be in a division with Dakota, Kelvin, Vincent Massey and Grant Park. There won’t be an easy start to the season, as the Sabres host the pre-season favourites to win the South East Division in the Dakota Lancers for their first regular season game of the season Sept. 8 at 5 p.m.

Steinbach nearly stole a game from the Lancers last season when they visited Dakota, but just couldn’t find any offensive punch despite a valiant defensive effort throughout the game.

“We have a history of playing (Dakota) tough,” Fedus said.

“We’ve beaten them a couple of times, they’ve beat us a couple of times. They’re going to be athletically gifted, we know that. Our job is going to be to go in and execute to the best of our abilities and compete as hard as we can. If we want to win games in the playoffs, that’s the kind of team we have to beat.”

While Dakota may be the pre-season pick to win the division, Fedus added nothing should be taken for granted this season.

The Steinbach football program has decided to eliminate their junior varsity program for this season. In an email sent Sept. 6, program co-ordinator Jamie Peters said the team just didn’t have the numbers to compete in the league.

“By forming into one team, we can run higher quality practices, will still focusing on development and hopefully rebuild back into two programs in the upcoming season,” he wrote

Springfield has moved up to the top level of Manitoba high school football this season and will be playing in the North East Division alongside Elmwood, Kildonan East, Murdoch McKay, Miles Mac and River East.

Springfield will host the Kildonan East Reivers to kick off their season Sept. 7 at 5 p.m.