A Bills and Nitros Sunday morning

There was a mixture of fun and intense preparation this past Sunday morning at Youngs Sportsplex in Welland.

On one side of the facility, Niagara Youth Flag Football house league players were participating in a Buffalo Bills clinic while on the other side, members of the NYFF’s Nitros travel teams were practising for a number of upcoming tournaments.

“We are in Youngs all winter. We have so much happening and when they let me know they wanted to come it was hard to get field time,” NYFF founder and coach Matt Hill said. “But luckily our travel teams are here every Sunday morning for two hours so we moved some of that around.”

One hundred house league players were invited to take part in the Buffalo Bills clinic.

With upbeat music playing in the background, the house league players moved from station to station.

“They are learning the fundamentals of flag football and we are getting them engaged with football,” said Preston Teague, the Buffalo Bills’ senior director of youth football and programs. “Some of them are experienced flag football players and some of them are brand new. This is the fourth time we’ve been up in the St. Catharines, Welland and Hamilton area this year and hopefully we can get up here three or four times in 2024.”

Each participant received a Buffalo Bills T-shirt, gift bag, NFL Canada swag and a chance for a meet and greet with Buffalo Bills great Fred Jackson, Buffalo’s third all-time leading rusher. Mascot Billy Buffalo was also in attendance.

The Bills’ entourage loves coming to Niagara.

“It is part of our fan base.We can show them what Bills football is all about and hopefully create the next generation of Bills fans throughout Ontario as well,” Teague said. “We have a lot of fans in Southern Ontario and the Niagara Region and we are excited to be here today.”

On the other side of Youngs Sportsplex NYFF’s 12 travel teams were hard at work while still obviously having fun.

“We have a mix of on field, some game films and some chalk talk and we are just kind of making it work today,” Hill said.

There are four girls teams and eight boys teams, ranging in age to under-16 from under-7.

“Our big focus right now is preparing for Disney in January for the world championships. We have nine of our teams going down there and we are getting them ready,” he said.

All of the Nitros team have been selected except for the high school boys team. Tryouts for that team were held recently.

“It was great. We had 50 kids come out and we were seeing the cream of the crop, A.N. Myer players, Notre Dame players, Niagara Spears and Niagara Generals players,” Hill said. “We are getting the best football players in the Niagara Region and that was our long-term goal. We are seeing our youth players aging up into high school but we are also getting tackle players who are looking for some other stuff to do. It is looking phenomenal.”

Once the high school team is selected, there will be 150 Nitros travel players.

“We are going to be doing about five tournaments this year. We are going to Disney in January, Toronto in February, Buffalo in March and then we are going to the provincials in the summer. I just got named to coach Team Ontario under-18 so I am really excited about that. Also for our club teams, there are the club provincials so we will send all our teams there.”

The travel program has morphed into a year-round system.

“When we ramp up, we will be going January to August. We will shut down in the fall for high school football. In the summer we will hand pick some tournaments because we know a lot of the kids are playing Spears, Generals and other football programs. We don’t want to conflict with that. We will go year-round but there will be pockets where we shut down and give kids a break because we know we are dealing with a lot of multi-sport athletes.”

News that flag football will be staged at the 2028 Olympics was a big boost to the sport.

“Everything is coming together but what I am trying to remind people is that the Olympics are incredible but let’s not forget all the good things about having all these young boys and girls playing a sport that they love and having fun,” Hill said. “I might be biased but I know that there are a couple Nitros players right now that could be future Olympians. If you look on the girls side and see what some of the girls are doing, there is some high-level talent and it is the same thing on the boys side too. I am really excited to see where it goes for them.

One of the girls players hard at work Sunday was Kennedy Forster, a Grade 11 student at Denis Morris.

The 16-year-old St. Catharines resident has been involved with travel flag football for about a year.

“It’s really, really good and I have played tackle football for my school the past two years.”

She loves the chance to get to play with girls.

“It’s really cool. The girls always have your back. The guys it is a little difficult because there is a gender gap there but the girls it is like a family. It’s like having a whole bunch of sisters.”

She enjoys the sport.

“I was a cheerleader but I like contact stuff and this is perfect to go into from tackle,” she said. “We get a lot of reps all the time and there is a lot of scholarships coming up for women in flag football.”

News that flag football is becoming an Olympic sport is great news for Forster.

“It will be pretty cool to see all those girls going there and I would love to be there. It would be great to make history.”