Redcoats glad to be back
Danny Lewis has been starting on offence and defence for the Governor Simcoe Redcoats since Grade 9 and no one is more happier to be back on the football field after a one-year COVID absence than the 18-year-old St. Catharines resident.
“Oh man. It is really great,” the 12B student said. “I wish we could have come back last year. I was excited for Grade 12 but we have a great group of guys and I have a lot of friends out here so we should be good.”
The six foot, 175-pound player was a slotback, cornerback kicker and punter for the Redcoats in 2019.
“I missed it like crazy. You could go on the field with a couple of friends and do some stuff and there were a few Spears’ things this summer but it’s so nice to be out here with everyone and the coaches.”
And while football was shut down for one year, it was never far from Lewis’ thoughts and actions.
“I got into the gym and started working out a lot. I gained 20 pounds and I worked on my nutrition and all those sort of things,” he said.
He also did plenty of work on his skills.
“We were running around cones and training. We had a quarterback friend who had a quarterback coach so we ran with them. We got in a lot of practice working in small groups.”
He is hoping he has a future in football beyond high school.
“I would love to play after high school if things pan out that way but right now I am just looking to have fun in my last year.”
Lewis has noticed a buzz around the school this year in relation to football.
“The kids this year love it. They are out here at lunch time throwing the ball around and I hear kids in the hall saying they just want to be on the football team. There is a real strong energy this year that I feel we haven’t had in the past.”
Head coach James Brophy who is helped by Carey Spiece, Joe Fusek and Mike Miotto, is thrilled to be back coaching.
“It’s great seeing the kids excited to be playing again. It just brings back all of the excitement within the building as well. There’s a hype around the kids playing and doing not only football but getting involved in all extracurriculars.
The Simcoe coaching staff has distributed 50 sets of equipment this fall.
“We have huge numbers this year,” Brophy said. “We had ordered a lot of extra equipment with the feeling we were either going to get a lot of kids or a very small amount and we’re very lucky that we have a large number of kids interested in playing this year so it’s been it’s been great.”
The roster is made up of two-thirds senior students.
“I would say probably most of them are seniors who have missed out. They were in that Grade 10 year. They’ve missed out for so long and now they’re coming back for 11 and 12. But we have a lot more Grade 9 interest which is great around the building.”
Everyone who tries out makes the team.
“What we try to do is develop them as much as we possibly can, whether it be spending a lot more time in practice with them or trying to get them in games in which maybe the outcome has already been determined,” Brophy said. “We’ll try to get them in as much as we possibly can. We make our best effort that every kid gets an opportunity to play every game. It doesn’t work all the time but that’s what we’re trying to do.”
The team is taking all necessary precautions related to COVID.
“With football though, a lot of times, especially working up into tackling drills, you’re doing a lot of social distancing anyways, and you’re keeping kids away from one another,” he said. “When we’re doing all of our tackling drills, it’s just a lot more stations in keeping kids separated from one another and then when we get into those drills, you get in, you do your work and then you move out of that drill into something else.”
Brophy is glad the season is starting a little later.
“We needed that time. There were some schools that started early in the summer and we didn’t do that. We focus on telling the kids that we will start on Day 1 (of school) because we have a lot of kids that go away during the summer or kids that have jobs.”
Brophy isn’t sure what the season will bring for the Redcoats.
“There’s still kind of that ebb and flow with even with what the schedule is going to look like,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of speed, but we don’t have a lot of size. We just want to be really competitive in every game, play all four quarters and that’s it.”
His main goal for the season isn’t related to wins and losses.
“I think the big hope is that we get the full season in and these kids get to celebrate actually playing the game and actually getting a love for it back because missing it for a year,” he said. “You don’t want to take it away for too long because it might be gone forever at that point.”
