Park View to play in Division 2 high school ranks next season

When he’s not in his police uniform, Jamie Dearing is obsessing about youth football.

The Bridgewater resident is on the cusp of achieving his latest obsession, assembling the South Shore’s first ever high school football team.

“It just consumes me,” said Dearing, an officer with Bridgewater Police. “It’s all I do on my days off. I work four-on, four-off so I have four full days to put into this becoming a success and that’s all I do, going to schools, organizing fundraisers, recruiting, ordering equipment. I’m not complaining because I love it.”

Over the course of five months, Dearing’s been able to get 27 South Shore teenagers, including his sons, to commit to the team that will play Division 2 football starting in September.

For Dearing, a graduate of Cole Harbour District High’s football program, it’s been a long time coming. Year after year he’s harnessed plenty of talent coaching with the region’s youth football program, South Shore Seahawks, which offers competitive leagues and skills development programs for kids age 7 to 15. But because there’s no local high school team, he’s watched plenty of that talent wasted. A few graduates make the move to a Halifax-area high school program but the majority simply stop playing football.

“We have a lot of talented kids down here that love to play football,” said Dearing. “Both my boys play. Half the people we’ve got signed up are ex-seahawks players. That’s the whole point, that you have all these kids that played Seahawk football at atom, peewee, bantam and had nothing else to do. Now that we’ve started this you’ll see them coming back to it and signing up.”

The team will represent Park View Education Centre in Bridgewater and compete against teams from the Annapolis Valley, Halifax and beyond. Dearing and another Seahawks coach, Dave Patton, approached school staff last January and were given the go-ahead, with timelines to meet. That’s when Dearing started pounding the pavement vising local schools in an effort to recruit players.

The team is currently shy three players for a full roster but Dearing figures that will come in the weeks ahead. Getting this far is the result of some luck and good timing. With the merger of Park View and Bridgewater High School, the task of fielding a high school team is made easier.