Photo Credit: Shaun Penner

By Shane Clausing

high school football

7 High School football players selected for final Team Alberta selection camp in Calgary

Jan 15, 2020 | 4:19 PM

This past weekend at Foote Field in Edmonton, Football Alberta ran its annual Super Weekend. This is the beginning of the selection process for the Team Alberta U-18 team which will compete in the Football Canada Cup this July in Vancouver, and U-17 team, which will go to a development camp in Maui and compete against local high schools in August.

370 High School players from across the province competed in the camp, and 142 athletes were selected to move on to the final selection camp in Calgary.

Over the weekend, players were split into different groups and scouted by coaches from around the province. There were 3-5 coaches per group that players worked with. It’s a long weekend for the coaches, but the players get a lot of looks and a ton of reps.

In the end six players from Grande Prairie made the cut and one player from Peace River.

The cuts saw Brandon Carroll, Matthew Ljuden, Carter Kettyle and Cade Labrecque from St. Joesph’s High School qualify for the final camp in Calgary.

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Nicholas Walker and Liam Kroeger out of Grande Prairie Composite High School, and Braxton Rudneski from Peace River High school were also invited to the final camp in Calgary.

“I was impressed, it’s always nice when you see kids from our team make it, but also kids throughout the league make it. It’s a good representation of our area and speaks well of the coaches in our area as well,” said Trevor Prichard, Head Coach of the St. Joes Celtics and the Defensive End’s coach with Alberta’s U-18 football team.

Football Alberta has been selecting teams to go to the Canada Cup since 1995. The selection camp used to take place in April, however because of the rise of indoor facilities in the province, Football Alberta decided to have a camp in January to begin the process.

The kids that attend the camp are all recommended from their High School coaches to Football Alberta. From there, players are invited to attend the camps. Now that the Edmonton camp is over, players will shift their focus to Calgary for the final camp.

“What we did this last weekend is we just wanted to see their skill set,” said Tim Enger, the Executive Director of Football Alberta. “We wanted to see what they brought to the table in terms of their ability to play at their positions. April is all about competition, there will be offenses and defenses sent out to the kids. They need to know them coming into camp, they need to show us they know they’re doing out and see how they compete against the kids in more scrimmage type scenarios.”

After the camp, the rosters will be downsized to 80 players. 40 players on the U-17 team and 40 on the U-18 team.

The players at the camps are also scouted heavily by top coaches from U-Sports football programs.

“We get tons of scouts,” said Prichard. “We had representatives from the University of Calgary, University of Alberta, University of Saskatchewan, University of B.C., Regina and others throughout Canada West. When we get down to the U-18 tournament there are tons of representatives from universities throughout Canada.”

He went on to say that the U-18 tournament has a recruiting night, where Prichard says the kids have a chance to walk around a mini trade fair, get “wined and dined”, and meet a lot of coaches from across Canada.

The final camp in Calgary is from April 3-5.