There is at least one goal in mind as the 2010 season of minor football in Yorkton gets set to 'kick off' this coming weekend.
According to coach Jason Farrell, there will probably be a few more of them set as the season rolls on. He enjoyed his first practice of the 2010 season at the Yorkton Regional High School Kinsmen Century Field Monday evening.
"There is one goal this year," explains Farrell sounding like he was beginning to explain a thesis of some sort to a bunch of high school students, "this year, it's to beat a team from Regina. We want to beat a developed team."
For a group of kids who've been formed to compete in the Regina Minor Football League, Farrell said its been tough to compete against the youngster from the Queen City, among others, who've bee taught the fundamentals of organized football for as many as five years.
Farrell doesn't seem worried.
If he is, he's doing a pretty good job hiding it.
The way things seem to be going for the 2010 Yorkton Gridders, he probably doesn't have to worry about anything.
They're going to be a better team this year.
"We're going to start with our goal (listed above) and go from there."
Farrell clearly has a plan and its to be better than they were last year.
They didn't have the greatest season by any stretch of the imagination, and the couple games they came out on top in, they blew the competition away; one game against Estevan, they scored more than 50 points.
Despite most of the players lined up to play the season opener at Mosaic Stadium in the heart of Roughrider nation are new to the team, Farrell continues to like his chances.
"What we have here is a Yorkton all-star team."
Last time out, Farrell and his coaching staff found they had to go over all the basics (sometimes even twice), this year, not seemingly as much.
"The program has to get better as it is," says Farrell.
He's not sounding like he's trying to convince anyone of that fact, either.
Their season opener is slated for Aug. 21 when they take on the Patriots. Farrell is downright blunt about what he expects to run into when that match gets going.
"It changes every year," he said of the Gridders' opponents, most of the players they'll see in that game, nobody knows much about at all.
"They'll have a crop of new kids."
To know something about your opponent is usually a good things because it can give the coaches a little insight.
He said it shouldn't matter who the opponent is, or who happens to be playing with that particular opponent; the football season, much like in the high school ranks, is very short.
A win is a win and it doesn't matter who you beat.
"That's the whole point. You have to win this game," asserts Farrell, who added that the other teams don't know anything about Yorkton, either.
He hinted that the goal of beating a Regina team kind of stems from the notion that some Regina don't like playing Yorkton; some don't even want to make the trip to Yorkton for games. Other tend to see Yorkton as a league doormat.
Farrell and company will surely have something to say about that this season.
Also, this year for the Yorkton Gridders, he said, is the introduction of the team playbook.
The PeeWee football club will play its home opener at 12 noon on Aug. 28 against none other than the Riders.
The Yorkton Junior Raiders will also play a home date that day against the Renegades at 2 p.m.
