Local football player excels with South Sask Selects

The South Saskatchewan Selects sent six teams and over 200 total players down south to compete at the end of February, with Robbins suiting up for the U-12 team. He is the only Battlefords area kid to play for the Selects, who annually hold tryouts for players from all over the province. The program is based in Moose Jaw.

“Definitely the football,” Robbins said, when asked what the best part of his trip was. “Something that really stood out was how different our teams were because [our] teams were huge but the American teams were so much faster.”

Although the U-12 team lost both of their games (they were originally supposed to play three but one team pulled out), it was an eye-opening experience for the John Paul II student.

“Their running backs and their linebackers would just kill us with their speed, pretty much,” he said. “The coaching with the selects [has been] better than anything else. So using that coaching and then actually playing other players who had this kind of coaching before really put a perspective on things.”

Not only is Robbins the only Battlefords area player, but he took home some hardware last weekend at the awards banquet for the selects program, held in Regina.

Four awards were handed out per team and Robbins came away with the lineman of the year for his age group.

“It was really, really awesome because I was the only who got the award who wasn’t a second year player on the selects,” Robbins said. “I can’t even remember [my reaction]. It was just so much shock.”

Robbins father Derek found the South Sask Selects program last year when he knew he wanted to get his son some better coaching.

And boy is Robbins glad he did.

“My dad, he found this whole thing,” Robbins said. “He drove me down to most of the practices. It was definitely him [who helped the most].”

Derek has been very pleased with the high level of coaching and is glad with how things have turned out.

“Up here with high school, everybody makes the teams so the coaches have to help everybody, whereas you get down there and they are tweaking the top-end athletes as well and making them better and better,” Derek said. “So down there it was just the smallest little things that they were correcting with him and it was really, really good.”

“It was really nice,” added Robbins’ mother Jen, on being able to watch her son compete. “The first game was kind of a blur, I don’t remember much of it. But the second game, for the most part they were kind of holding their own.

“The football was good and he got a lot of good experience out of it.”

Derek said there were two local coaches who helped his son tremendously, Tom Jesney and Stefan Geddes.

Robbins said without them things would have been different.

“They wanted me to play tight end and other positions like that and they helped me train,” Robbins said. “I had to learn how to catch really well in a one-week span so they helped me with that.”

In addition to coaches, the Robbins family wouldn’t have been able to go on the trip without some tremendous fund raising in the community.

Before going, they sold raffle tickets to help fund the cost of the trip.

“There are some people that really really helped in that,” Robbins said. “It would take a while to name all of them but if they read this, they know who they are. I just want to thank them.”

The South Sask Selects will head to San Antonio, Texas next year, and without any hesitation, Robbins said he’d love to be a part of it again.

As far as next year’s high school season with the John Paul Crusaders goes, Robbins is split between the junior and senior teams in a way, as he will be in Grade 9 and the senior team is usually filled with Grade 10s, 11s and 12s.

If the coaching staff wants him, he can play on the senior team, but he would have to earn that spot, which he clearly hopes to do.

“I would really, really love to show them that I have the capability to go on the senior team,” Robbins said.

Later this month, Robbins will be attending the U16 Football Academy in Saskatoon on April 24, in the hopes of working toward a spot on the North Sask U16 team, which will have their try-outs on May 27 and 28.

nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

@NathanKanter11

by Nathan Kanter

Local football player excels with South Sask Selects

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