Sacked season stole dreams of high school gridiron stars
Grade 12 footballers lose last chance to shine: `This was supposed to be our year'
Nate Beauchemin started pinpointing this weekend two years ago.
Saturday would have been the Subway Bowl high school football provincial final at B.C. Place Stadium — if there had been a season.
There's a history of teams enjoying success when their core group of Grade 12 players were contenders at the junior level as Grade 10s, and the Kelowna Owls, with Beauchemin at the controls as quarterback, had captured the junior provincial title on Dec. 1, 2018, with a 38-12 win over Victoria's Belmont Bulldogs at the downtown dome.
Making a run this year with Kelowna was Beauchemin's thinking right up until this fall. He stopped pinpointing this weekend then, realizing that COVID-19 wasn't about to oblige.
“This was supposed to be the year,” Beauchemin said. “It's pretty disappointing that we don't even get a shot to have a go at it.
“When school was starting and we heard about what was going to happen with cohorts and things like that I began to realize there's no way we could play this winter.”
Beauchemin also excelled in the defensive secondary for Kelowna and that's where he is slated to play next fall for the Calgary Dinos. One month ago Beauchemin committed to the Dinos, a Canada West rival of the UBC Thunderbirds.
Having that opportunity to continue his football story is “what makes it all sort of manageable,” Beauchemin admitted.
“In Grade 10, I got called up to the senior team for a playoff game. We lost and afterwards I looked around and saw all the seniors (Grade 12s) crying and hugging and that's when it really hit me that this is not forever,” Beauchemin said. “Football ends sometime.”
There are other players across the province expected to move onto the university gridiron next fall despite having their Grade 12 season put up on blocks because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
St. Thomas More Knights running back/ linebacker Nick Osho is set to join the Toronto Varsity Blues. Vancouver College Fighting Irish receiver/defensive back Jackson Findlay is on his way to the Western Mustangs, a Blues rival from London, Ont.
New Westminster Hyacks running back/defensive back Deakon Young is scheduled to become a Beauchemin teammate with the Dinos, while Hyacks two-way lineman Vishaan Narayan is heading to the SFU Clan.
Narayan had planned at one point to play in the high school ranks this season with Florida prep school Clearwater Academy, but reversed field at the last minute and returned to New Westminster. He admits he was worried about the COVID-19 case load in the Sunshine State.
As of Friday morning, The New York Times had Florida averaging 9,622 cases a day over the past seven days, the third highest total in the U.S. over that time frame. They had Florida with 1.03 million cases, the third most in the U.S.
The population of Florida is 21.5 million. The population of B.C. is 5.1 million.
Four B.C. players did go to Clearwater — cornerback Tremel States-jones ( Surrey's Lord Tweedsmuir Panthers), running back Jhavaun Blake (Rutland Voodoos), offensive lineman Jackson Mcewan ( Victoria's Mt. Douglas Rams) and offensive lineman Aaron Tung (Coquitlam's Centennial Centaurs) — and their new team has managed to get in a season. Clearwater (3-5) was set to play TRU Prep (5-2) in a playoff game Friday night.
“I respect the decisions that those guys made. I made a decision that was right for me and my family,” Narayan said.
Narayan admits to feeling grateful that he got a chance to show off his talents in 2019 with the Hyacks and earn himself scholarship interest. He believes there were talented Grade 11 players across the province that year who were playing behind a Grade 12 on their school team and could have turned heads this fall with a little of the spotlight.
“This was going to be their show out year,” he said. “It really sucks for them.”
Young added: “This took away some chances for people.”
Beauchemin wonders if it's not this year's Grade 11 crop of players who are the hardest hit by all of this. There are players all through this story who were committed to universities before stepping on the field as a Grade 12 athlete.
In the end, this is being figured out on the fly, like so much regarding the COVID-19 outbreak.
Football players with UBC, SFU and other programs have been given a year of eligibility back. University coaches may take on fewer new players this fall because of that decision. They may spread out that decision over several recruiting classes. They may, in fact, find that some of their current players who were granted that extra eligibility opt not to use it and move on.
“Everyone will have to adapt. The university coaches will figure out what they have to figure out,” said Beauchemin.
Narayan says “it's just so sad,” to not have a high-school football season. Young feels “like something is missing,” and Findlay pegs it all as “super strange.”
“There's a totally different atmosphere at the school,' Osho said. “Normally in the fall we'd have game-day rallies and everyone would come wearing (school colour) red and little Grade 8s and Grade 9s would tell you that they're excited to watch you play. Now, there's nothing.”
Findlay says he's been able to find positives through it all. He says he's focused even more on training and he's managed to put on 15 pounds.
“I would have obviously preferred to have a season, but I've been going from football to basketball to track and spring basketball without any breaks, and this happening has given me a chance to focus on lifting and running and things like that,” he said. “I think I've seen some really big improvements.
“I just hope that we have a season next year at the university level and that our Grade 11s get to have a season as well. They haven't been able to play at the varsity level yet and I think that's tough on them as well.”
There's some rumbling in the high school community that they might push to get some games in come the spring. That's to be decided, which, of course, is something we're all accustomed to now in so many facets of our lives.
“I've been trying to stay ready just in case we do get some games,” said Narayan. “It's all been really strange.”