News

The JV team’s JV team

By Matthew Semisch

10/28/2014

The future of youth football in Bottineau is brighter now than it’d ever been before, and that’s due in large part to a bit of forward thinking.

Five years ago, Bottineau’s high school and middle school football teams were hamstrung to a certain degree by a lack of a grassroots program. Boys on Bottineau Middle School’s team, once they got there, had never played competitive football before.

For the last four years, though, Rob Bedlion has been working to rectify that.

In 2010, he formed a third and fourth grade team to play in the tackle football league sanctioned by the Minot Family YMCA.

The league is mostly made up of players from Minot, but Bottineau, Velva, Surrey and Des Lacs all have their own teams.

Minot also has a league for fifth and sixth grade teams, but Bedlion ran into a roadblock at first in the form of older kids’ other sporting commitments.

“For two years, I tried to get us started for the fifth and sixth-grade teams,” Bedlion said, “But we didn’t have enough guys to really do it, and that’s due to fifth and sixth-grade basketball and stuff like that going on, so I went younger.

“We had a big group of third and fourth graders that year and a lot of interest, and those third graders now are our oldest kids, and they’ve stuck with it.”

Those that came before had struggled once they finally began playing competitive football. Other area cities already had youth teams set up, and that gave their high schools the upper hand over those like Bottineau’s.

“The biggest reason it’s so important to have something like these youth teams,” Bedlion said, “Is that when they get to the seventh-grade level and they’re playing middle school football, they’re playing teams from towns that have had youth leagues, and we hadn’t been able to compete with that.

“Our kids were just behind in their development as football players. I felt we had a duty to get them in earlier and teach them the basics so that they could have more fun out there now and then also once they were playing with other older kids.”

Two years ago, a fifth and sixth grade team was formed once the younger kids moved up and were succeeded by new third and fourth graders.

As the program’s numbers have grown, so have those of the coaching staff.

Bedlion started the program with assistant coach Adam Frykman four years ago. Two more coaches later came on board, as Andy Wintermute became an assistant coach with the program two years ago and Tom Jorgensen joined last year.

Teams in the Minot YMCA’s two leagues each play eight games per season, with the first games of the year taking place the weekend after Labor Day. Bottineau closed out its 2014 campaigns last Saturday.

Each team is named for a National Football League team. Bottineau’s third and fourth grade team for this year was nicknamed the Raiders, and the fifth and sixth grade group was called the Ravens.

The Raiders played its games on the practice field used by Minot Bishop Ryan High School. The Ravens played their games on the field located at Edison Elementary School in Minot.

With both of the youth teams, Bedlion said, the coaches’ focus is on giving players the same style of coaching that they will get once they don the purple and white uniforms of the Bottineau High Braves.

On top of that, the program will boost the Braves’ numbers.
“We’ve got two more teams now than we did five years ago,” Bedlion said, “And the kids grades third to 12th are all learning the same things under the same program.

“Some of the stuff for the younger kids is scaled down, but it’s all consistent with where we want these kids to get to.”