DOZENS of aspiring gridiron stars, with their sights set on playing football in North America and an opportunity at higher education, turned out to exhibit their skills for Canadian football coaches at the Eastern Parade grounds Monday night.
About 40 players, ranging from current Commonwealth American Football League (CAFL) players to relative newcomers of the game, participated in the mini-camp for football prospects hosted by the Holland College Hurricanes.
The players were taken through several drills by Hurricanes’ head coach Tex MacDonald and Michael O’Grady, university vice president of innovation, enterprise and strategic development.
The mini-camp included timed agility drills and a timed 40-yard dash.
MacDonald was impressed with the talent level he saw from the participants, despite the high turnout number which limited the amount of drills and evaluations the coaching staff were able to perform.
“What we saw today was a lot of talent across the board. This country has loads of that and that’s a major part of the reason why we have so many Bahamians on our team and why we decided to come down and host the mini-camp here. We didn’t get to do much of what we wanted because of the large turnout so we had to cut quite a few things out, but we still feel like it was a productive day overall.
“We expected about 12-15 guys to come out and have a real in-depth look at them, but we got about 40 that showed up and we tried as best we could to accommodate them,” he said.
“With what we had, I think we had a great opportunity to run some important agility drills, so we had a good idea of how some of the guys would move around the football field. We also ran some 40s because we wanted to get a good idea of the speed these guys possess and we were pleased with a lot of the times that came out of that.”
MacDonald said the staff expects to add a few of the camp’s participants to its current roster, a fifth of which is made up of Bahamians.
“Out of the full team of 50 players, 10 are Bahamian and most of those guys are coming back so this fall and out of this training camp we’re looking to add about three to five guys,” he said. “We certainly saw some guys tonight we would take another look at and be interested and they will hear from us in the near future.”
The Hurricanes look to bolster the talent corps for a young football club programme which just recently completed its inaugural year.
Several members of the coaching staff were in the capital over the weekend to take in CAFL action and view some of the skills of the younger players.
The Hurricanes currently have 10 Bahamian players on their roster, including Demetrius Ferguson, Marc Barrett, Phil Rolle and Jason Mitchell, as members of its football programme, and a host of others that helped move the Hurricanes into its inaugural year.
The Hurricanes are a member of the Atlantic Football League, which was established in 2009 with three teams – UNB (Fredericton) Red Bombers, UNBSJ Seawolves, and Moncton Jr Mustangs.
In the 2010 season, Holland and the Dalhousie University Tigers made it a five-team league.
The Hurricanes finished with a 2-4 win loss record, good enough for fourth in the division.
“We were looking for guys with speed that could come in and help a young programme like ours grow right away,” O’Grady said. “Ours is a speed league so its certainly one of the things we look to improve any chance we get. We feel like there is a lot of talent here in the Bahamas, it is just tremendous.”
The vice president said the relationship between his institution and the Bahamas will continue to grow on the athletic front with the advent of the football club.
“It says a lot about how the game of football is growing in the Bahamas with the huge turnout we had today for a one-day mini-camp. The relationship between the Bahamas and Holland College began in the classroom and continues to grow with the football team,” he said.
“I’m sure a lot of the guys at the school now have told their friends back home about their success and it continues to help the programme grow by word of mouth.
“We look forward to adding new players to the Holland family and, at the same time, helping some of these young men with an opportunity at higher education.”
[URL]http://www.tribune242.com/sports/12102010_HollandCamp_sports_pg
By RENALDO DORSETT
Advocating for football prospects one story at a time.