The crunch of pads, blowing of whistles and murmur of trash talk is back at Creighton’s Oval of Dreams. The Creighton Kodiaks football team is back, hoping to both defend a title and make history.
There’s an excitement in the air at Kodiaks camp Sunday evening. The pads and helmets are on for most players, because today is the first day of practice where tackling is allowed. It’s a crowded field - the Kodiaks, who once played key games with sparse sidelines, have almost 40 players out for training camp this year, including 10 Grade 9 students.
“They keep coming in. It’s a good problem to have, even through six can play and only 30 can travel,” said head coach Ryan Karakochuk.
“I’m excited for this year.”
One of the players doing the most tackling is Jaxon Smith, the energetic offensive lineman built like a brick house who the players affectionately call “Bongo” - named after a Snapchat in-joke, not for the way he pounds on opponents, though you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Anyone unlucky enough to go up against Smith in a tackling drill is almost certainly getting a face full of turf. Tackling is Bongo’s business and last year, business was good - he hopes to keep that up this year.
“I’m going to be doing what I did last year - destroying the line, destroying people, hopefully not putting them in the hospital, but that’s a bonus,” he said.
Off to the side in a red no-contact jersey stands Marcus Kennedy, the Kodiaks’ returning quarterback. In his first year as a starter last year, Kennedy helped helm the team’s best-ever offence - now in his Grade 12 season and without his two best receivers, Kennedy hopes to repeat the trick.
“If you’re the starting QB, there’s a lot of pressure with that. I’m a senior now and I’m ready to handle it,” he said.
A few former Kodiaks players are dotted around the field helping run drills. A pair of graduating players from last year’s team, Brenden Haley and Myles Patterson, help run drills - Patterson, last year’s kicker, helps this year’s starting Kodiak kicker Grace Dubinak boot field goals, while Haley stands with the large group of rookie players to show them the right way to hit. Elsewhere, another former star, Hayden Kanto-Lengyel, organizes the starters’ tackling drills with Karakochuk.
The team returns some solid talent, but lost key dressing room leaders for this year. Karakochuk said the team on paper looks good and he’s impressed with the players’ effort so far, but someone will have to step up as a leader.
“It’s going to take some time to fill that, but I think we’ve got more speed than we’ve had in a long time. We just lack a little bit of leadership and a little bit of size,” he said.
Karakochuk, the only head coach the Kodiaks’ football squad has ever had, will assume his post on the Kodiaks’ sideline for his eighth season. Since the team started, no team in northern Saskatchewan has seen the level of success the Kodiaks have, winning four league titles including the championship last fall.
Over the team’s seven seasons and counting, Karakochuk has become the commissioner of the Northern Saskatchewan Football League (NSFL) and has led the way for coordinating new programs and events for northern football, attempting to build the sport and the northern teams into something that can compete with southern teams.
So far, that second point has proven to be an issue. Every year, the top team from northern Saskatchewan goes into provincial conference games against more established teams from bigger, southern schools - and every year, so far, the northern teams have lost. The Kodiaks came closer than any other team did last year, playing Shellbrook in Creighton and losing a 30-26 heartbreaker.
This year, no league title game will be held - the NSFL title, the Ralph Pilz Trophy, will be awarded to the team with the best regular season record through six games. Only that winner - not the top two teams like last year - will move on to play provincial ball Oct. 29 and unlike last year, the northern teams will not get to play on their home field.
There’s already plans in place and research being conducted on some prospective opponents, but there is a season to play first - that starts with a pair of road games Sept. 7 and 14 against the Chief Ahtahkakohp Titans and the Senator Myles Venne Huskies. The Kodiaks will also resume a rivalry on the road Sept. 28, playing the Charlebois Community School Islanders in Cumberland House in a 2021 title game rematch.
This year's big home game will be Sept. 23 against the Hector Thiboutot T-Wolves from Sandy Bay, who will play their first football season since 2019. That game will be the Kodiaks’ home opener - and they plan to play, for the first time ever, after dark under Friday night lights.
When asked about their goals for this season, Smith and Kennedy both have their eyes set past a league title - they want to be the first northern team to bring a provincial win back home.
“It’s going to be a challenge. We’re missing a bunch of our really good players from last year, but I think if we buckle down and get ‘er done, we can do it,” Smith said.
Karakochuk isn’t quite as gung-ho as his players, but does see a way for the team to break the mould.
“We're in tough right now. I'm not going to say that I feel good about winning a provincial game right now because A; we’re on the road and we know that, and B; we’re likely playing either Wakaw or Birch Hills, which have both beat us in the past,” he said.
“We’re going to make sure that we scout those teams when they play and we’re going to try to be our best when we get to that game. We have enough speed to cause some trouble, but in all honestly, I just want to make sure everybody’s healthy for Ahtahkakoop and we’ll go from there.”
