The Estevan Power Dodge U10 Cudas football team has applied the finishing touches to what has been a pretty good season.
The Cudas were scheduled to have a season-ending intersquad game Thursday evening at the Woodlawn Athletic Field. It was their one opportunity to play at home, and according to coach Jeremy Ciepliski, they were excited to play under the lights for the first time.
The Cudas played in jamborees in Weyburn, Moose Jaw and Moosomin this season. A jamboree was scheduled for Estevan in late September as part of Football Day in Estevan, but it was cancelled due to weather. It was a disappointment for some of the kids, who were looking forward to the games and the opportunity to play at home.
In a jamborees, the football field is divided into four quadrants. The Cudas were then split into two separate teams, and those teams had two games each, with a break between the games. Teams had six players on the field for the games.
It placed on emphasis on skill development rather than wins and losses. Scores were not tracked, although Ciepliski noted some of the parents and kids kept score.
“We’re making sure that we’re keeping it fun and keeping it interesting for the little guys,” said Ciepliski.
The standard game, with 12 players on the field for each team, using close to the full-length field, was likely a little bit too much, he said.
“When they told me it was going to be … set up like this, the games were going to be shorter and they would get to play an extra game or two games that day, I was a lot more excited about this than the way we were doing it before,” said Ciepliski. “It’s kind of the way I started out when I started playing football.”
While the players might have been tired by the end of the second game, the kids were pretty excited about this new format.
Ciepliski said the Cudas had a lot of players who were inexperienced, but all of the kids who came out showed improvement.
“We had some kids from last year who came out who were pretty good leaders for the younger kids,” said Ciepliski.
Each practice saw 24-28 players show up. More than half of the team was first year players. Only eight or nine players were back from last year’s team.
All of the players had the opportunity to play offence and defence.
“It gives them the basics of both sides of the ball,” said Ciepliski.
At the start of the season, the Cudas had players who didn’t know much about football, including how much contact was involved. Now they look like they’ve been blocking for a while, he said. Others didn’t know how many downs they had to get 10 yards, or they didn’t know about touchdowns.
“I think most of the kids have a really good idea of what’s going on and know how to play just about every position,” said Ciepliski.
