Alberta ready for Football Canada Cup 2015

Since Team Canada pulled out of the bungled IFAF Senior World Championship tournament (something I choose to not dwell on), attention turns to the Football Canada Cup in July. New Brunswick announced its roster late last month, and Alberta did the same recently.

Typically, that generates a few articles in local papers. Last week, the Rocky View Weekly published a brief article about the Cochrane area players that will suit up for Team Alberta. There's a portion of that below (full version, by Brendan Nagle, here) though the picture is from the Cochrane Times.

Three Cochrane-area football players have made the final cut for Football Alberta’s under-18-years-old (U18) provincial football team. 

Quarterback Des Catellier of Bearspaw, defensive lineman Justin Sambu of Cochrane and linebacker Dan Teitz of Springbank, all of whom play for the Cochrane Lions, will play for Team Alberta at the Football Canada Cup (FCC) U18 championship in Montreal this summer. 

They were chosen May 10 from a pool of 130 of Alberta’s top minor football players following Football Alberta’s U18 main selection camp in Calgary. When the selection process began in April, there were 400 players trying out. Forty made the team. 

“It feels pretty good. It’s great talent. Everybody’s working hard,” said Catellier, 17, who plays high school football for Calgary powerhouse St. Francis. 

The Grade 11 student is in his second tour with Team Alberta, last year going as a kicker and backup quarterback. This season he’s going as quarterback first, kicker second. 

Whether he starts at QB is still to be determined leading up to July’s FCC in Montreal. At the May 10 Team Alberta scrimmage on McMahon Stadium’s FieldTurf surface, the lanky pivot threw a touchdown strike to Bev Facey’s (Sherwood Park) Chuba Hubbard and ran for a touchdown on the two offensive sequences he played. 

“It’s going to be a good experience to see how we stack up against the rest of the country,” Catellier said.

St. Francis posted a 5-1 record in 2014. Their loss came when the Notre Dame Pride defeated them 21-18. The two teams met again in the city championship game and the Pride won again (their third consecutive title), this time 17-10. St. Francis was ranked 5th in the country going into that game.

Here's the full Alberta roster, as displayed by Alberta Football News. St. Francis is certainly well represented.