The New Westminster Hyacks’ varsity squad is heading south for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that includes football and life lessons.
The New Westminster Secondary School varsity football team’s two-week fall camp started on Monday at Mercer Stadium. After several days on the home field, the team will fly to Atlanta, Georgia on Aug. 27, where it will hold three more days of practice and then play a game under the Friday Night Lights on Aug. 30.
“It’s really a learning experience,” said Andrew McKechnie, the team’s co-head coach. “It’s a learning experience – both in football and life.”
For some students, McKechnie said the trip will be the first time they have been away from their families for this length of time.
In addition to practising in Atlanta and playing a game against the Bulldogs team from Mary Persons High School in Forsyth, Georgia, the players will be taking in some of the sights.
“They are going to see what a southern American city looks like,” McKechnie said. “They are going to see museums and things.”
While in Atlanta, the Hyacks will attend a college football game and will visit the National Center for Human and Civil Rights, the College Football Hall of Fame, and World of Coca-Cola.
“We are doing all those kinds of things too, to make it not all about football,” McKechnie said. “Atlanta has a huge civil rights history and a museum. We want to show our players we are not just there for football. Let’s learn some things, let’s see what other people have had to deal with, see how they have overcome obstacles that aren’t just on the football field and use that as a learning experience for some of our players.”
Before the Covid pandemic, the Hyacks made a trip south every three years.
“Post-Covid, this is the first year,” McKechnie said. “We went to California in 2011. We went to Texas in 2014 and to California again in 2017. And then, of course, 2020 was when we were due for the next one, but that wasn’t going to happen. Now, we are bringing it back again and we want to try and get back to that same schedule.”
McKechnie said the trips benefit the team in a number of ways.
“It gives us a chance for team building. It gets our players away from the distractions of everyday life here,” he said. “We get to see different competition. Up here, we see the same teams regularly. Also, at the end of the day, it gives the players themselves an experience they may not have had before or may not have again.”
Explained McKechnie: “We want to give them an experience that they will be able to carry with them for the rest of their lives,”
McKechnie said the trips to the United States also provide the Hyacks with an opportunity to compete against teams they would not normally play.
“We are going to go down there and play a fairly good team,” he said. “So, come the end of season when we are deep in the playoffs and we are seeing good teams that are in B.C., we can always point back to our experience this next week and say, ‘Listen, we have battled and played teams that are much more difficult than we are now, when we were playing in Georgia.’ We can use this experience to give them a taste for what things are going to be like and build skills early.”
While the coaching staff has been working on the trip since January, McKechnie said it is now becoming a reality for the players.
“You can tell the players are starting to get a little hyped up,” he told the Record. “They are starting to get excited about the prospect of going and doing this.”
Funding for the trip comes from fundraising (including a lift-a-thon where players lifted weights), sponsorships, and parents.
More than 50 people are attending the Aug. 27 to Sept. 1 trip to Georgia. That includes coaches, chaperones and more than 40 players.
“We are looking pretty good,” McKechnie said of the team.
“I would say we have fairly high expectations of this year’s team. This year’s team, when they were at the JV (junior varsity) level, they made the provincial finals; they lost in the finals to Vancouver College. So, this team has been together now for four years. They know what it takes to get through playoffs and work your way through the end and play.”
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