Vikings players rave about experience at International Bowl

“It was a crazy experience,” said Tuiloma, who played on the offensive line. “Playing in AT&T Stadium was wild. It was insane… I was kind of in disbelief. It didn’t sink in that I was going to be playing in this stadium until I reached there.”

“It was quite the experience,” Weber, who played on the defensive line, added. “That’s going to stick with me forever. Not too many people can say they’ve been selected to go down there for a week and play at AT&T stadium.”

Sixteen total teams attended the bowl, with each playing just one game. Eleven of the 16 teams were various American built rosters, while there were four teams from Canada and one from Japan. The three Vikings represented the U-17 Team Saskatchewan, but there was also a U-16 Team Alberta, a U-16 Team Ontario, and a U-18 Team Ontario representing Canada.

Team Saskatchewan went up against the U.S. U-17 Selects team (not the best of the best but still a strong American team) and the prairie boys scored the first touchdown of the game.

“Everyone was getting wild on the sidelines,” Lamb, a running back, said, describing the team’s reaction to their first score. “We stuck with them right until half. It was just back and forth.”

After two quarters the score was 14-13 for the U.S. U-17 Selects.

But in the end, Team Saskatchewan fell 42-15.

“They just didn’t let off the gas,” Tuiloma said. “By half, we thought we had them so we kind of let off but they didn’t.”

Of course, one challenge for all the Canadian teams was quickly adapting to American football rules, which are slightly different.

Weber said that as a lineman, having an extra down was one of the adjustments he noticed the most.

“The fourth down can drain down a person,” he said. “[Also] in the CFL you have to give a yard [at the line of scrimmage] but down there you can be right on top of the ball and they’re just a little bit bigger.”

Vikings coach Mike Humenny was extremely happy that three of his players were selected to play. He wasn’t there in person, but tuned into the game on ESPN.

Humenny felt that although their names didn’t jump off the stats sheet, that doesn’t mean they weren’t effective.

“Knowing some of the coaches and once again understanding the systems that they’re playing in, I was really happy to see how these guys played with obviously the best guys in our province,” he said. “These guys didn’t look out of place at all. I was extremely happy with the way they played.

“And I’m always worried about how they’re acting as citizens and what they were like off the field and [the coaches] vouched wholly for these guys and said they were great the whole week.”

Off the field, there wasn’t too much time off.

The team practiced twice a day heading into Monday night’s game. Other than getting a little bit of time with family, the other priorities were three meals a day and a good night’s sleep.

Rest played an important role also.

“[We’d] have ice baths to recover, stretch, and then talk with friends back home,” Lamb said when asked what they did in their spare time.

One surprise was the weather, which wasn’t pleasant, and also not expected, given that they were 2,700 km south of North Battleford.

“Just before the game, that night, we got flash flood warnings, tornado warnings and a tornado actually touched down,” Weber said.

“It was like they were used to it,” Tuiloma added. “And all the Saskatchewan guys were kind of in a panic[ed] mood.”

Now that they’re back in the great White North, the expectation is they will be mentors to others on next year’s Vikings team.

“I think that when we open up and… we get into our 2017 season, I think an experience like this is going to make these three guys better,” Humenny said. “We have high expectations for next season. And these three guys are going to play a major role in that. We have a number of other guys here in school that are going to do that but I’m going to expect these guys to lead the way with these experiences that they’ve had.”

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11

by Nathan Kanter

Vikings players rave about experience at International Bowl

What's Trending