OLDS — As they get ready to once again host their annual Football Day in Olds, the Olds Amateur Football Association (OAFA) is dealing with a pleasant surprise – a huge upsurge in players.
“Numbers look phenomenal this year. We have 33 Bulldogs and 32 Huskies this year,” Dennis Yurchevich, head coach of the Olds Huskies and Bulldogs said during an interview.
He said that’s about 10 more kids on each team than they’ve previously had. Kids from as far away as Carstairs have joined the program.
The Huskies play peewee-level football, for kids age 10 to 12 while kids playing for the Bantam Bulldogs range in age from 13 to 15, as long as the older ones are still in Grade 9.
Both teams open their season on Sept. 10.
Football Day in Olds is an annual tradition. This year’s edition will be played on Sept. 17 at the Normie Kwong football field adjacent to École Olds High School, starting at 10 a.m.
The Huskies will host the Rocky Mountain House Junior Rebels and the Bulldogs will host to Hanna.
Yurchevich believes the surge in enrolment in the OMFA is a result of changes the association made to its program.
He said for several seasons, both teams had a tough time finding and maintaining players. They “struggled to win games and be competitive.”
"Word has really gotten around that football is starting to grow in town and we have a lot of new kids this year that are very excited to come out,” he said.
“Now that we have turned over a new leaf within our association, we are having players turn out in record numbers,” he wrote in an email.
“In fact, we closed our registration two weeks early this year because our teams were full and we were running out of equipment; not bad problems to have.
“We are now both very competitive teams. Last season, the Huskies fell in the league championship game and the Bulldogs’ season ended in the league semi-final.”
To celebrate the new direction they're headed in, the association rebranded its logo and the logos of both its teams.
Yurchevich said the previous logo for the Bulldogs was “a very cartoonish-style side profile of bulldog.
“This one now is a much nicer looking bulldog and there is a football in the backdrop and it says ‘Olds Bulldogs’ on it.”
He said the former Huskies logo was a side profile – almost a silhouette – of a Husky.
Yurchevich said the new Huskies logo is “a front-facing, more aggressive, more realistic-looking Husky with a football in the backdrop and ‘Olds Huskies’ below it.”
The association’s old logo was the OAFA acronym in the shape of a football. The new one combines the logos of its two teams.
Yurchevich said all the logos were designed by a Didsbury firm which will also be providing team apparel.
There is one change that hasn’t been positive.
There are no girls enrolled on either team.
Yurchevich said normally the team has at least one girl per team. And in 2017, they hit a high point of five girls on the Huskies.
He’s not sure why no girls tried out this year.
