Story by Matt Sookram
“Looking to the past to shape the future” should be the unofficial motto of this years Nipissing Wild Football team. Everywhere you look this organization has reached into its city’s football history in an attempt to build a strong product moving forward.
“North Bay does have a proud tradition of football,” says Head Coach Tyson Brear, a Quarterback at West Ferris during his playing days.
“With the Ticats and the Bulldogs, we want to build on that and be part of that so maybe in the future we can bring back the Bulldogs adult team and that starts here.”
“Here” is the newer Steve Omischl Sports Complex where the Wild players gather twice a week in preparation of their May 28th season opener against the Toronto Jr. Argonauts. And while the last couple of seasons of high school and Wild football have been played on the artificial turf – the team will open its year on the traditional grass field at the Trojan Complex; the same gridiron Brear and others played their hearts out for NDA football supremacy in the past and where Brear hopes this generation of Wild players will do the same for the Ontario Football Conference.
“There’s a pride thing that I’ve tried to explain to these kids. We come from a city where we haven’t had a lot of success at the high school level and I think that’s shown we’ve won one NOSSA title in 20 years. I want to improve that and I think the rest of the coaching staff wants to improve that as well.”
Helping out the coaching staff and players this year are Wild Alumni and Ottawa Gee-Gees players Zach Wilkinson and Jordan Sutcliffe, two star players with the Algonquin Barons in their high school days.
“It’s huge,” Brear says about having those two on the sidelines.
“Kids look up to guys like that. They know who they are… so when they see that, one they are usually going to listen a little more intently, but two they also say if (Wilkinson and Sutcliffe) did it I can do it as well.”
Wilkinson says he personally felt obliged to give back to a program that helped his own development. Wilkinson played the past five years at defensive back with the Ottawa Gee-Gees.
“Everyone on the administration and the new coaches coming in put in a lot of time so I think that giving back to them is only appropriate,” said Wilkinson.
He credits coaches Dan Webb and Brian Samson for what they have done with the program and says it’s time to reward some of their hard work by showing what they instilled into him as a player and now as a coach.
Sutcliffe, also coming out of the Gee-Gees program, echoed that statement himself “North Bay sports has done so much for my development as an athlete and as a person so I just feel it was my responsibility to come and help out.”
After five years in the OFC the Nipissing Wild have seen mixed success, but this sixth season gives the team a chance to start anew after a winless summer in 2015.
Brear says it’s very early in the process but they feel they are off to a positive start.
“I think at the start of the year when we set out our goals and we set out where we wanted to be at this point, I think we’re right there.”
He says the numbers are up and so is the talent level and that bodes well for a team who consistently plays against teams who’s numbers easily reach 60 or more players every year.
“We’re up to about 37 committed guys and other than a couple of positions where we are thin, we are alright pretty much all over the field,” said Brear.
“We’re two weeks away from game one and we are where we want to be,” he added. “We want to raise that level of high school football but bring that tradition to these kids.”
