The Saskatchewan Roughriders will soon play a home game with an entire league in the stands.
The 10th Northern Football Jamboree is to be held Sept. 27 to 29 in Regina. The jam-packed agenda includes a Sept. 28 CFL contest between the Roughriders and the visiting Ottawa REDBLACKS.
“It’ll be about the experience and about football,” says Marnie Forsberg, the Saskatchewan Roughrider Foundation’s Manager of Community Programs.
The Foundation and Football Saskatchewan have partnered with the Northern Saskatchewan Football League and the Jamboree’s sponsor — the First Nations University of Canada — to bring players and coaches from nine northern high school football teams to the Queen City.
The Jamboree is usually held in the spring, but it was deferred this year due to uncertainty regarding the teachers’ labour situation.
Resourcefulness won the day, though, and plans came to fruition for an event that will unfold leading up to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (Sept. 30).
“The Rider Foundation really wanted to make this work,” NSFL Commissioner Ryan Karakochuk says from Creighton.
“It won’t be the same type of Jamboree where we’re doing skill development for 2½ straight days, because we’re in our seasons now and we don’t really want to get banged up.
“We’re going to have to play when we get home, so it’s going to be more of a football celebration. We’re going to have some fun on the Mosaic turf. We’re also going to do Truth and Reconciliation with the First Nations University of Canada.
“We’re going to take in the Riders game and meet some of the players and go on the field. They have a whole agenda planned for us.
“This Jamboree will be different than other ones, but it’s still going to have the same value.”
All previous Jamborees have been held in Prince Albert or La Ronge — the one exception being in 2022, when the event was based in Regina for the first time.
As part of that landmark visit, the NSFL delegation attended a Roughriders game at Mosaic Stadium.
Roughriders player ambassadors have often travelled to the Jamboree when it has not been held in Regina.
The new alliance with the FNUC will be highlighted on Sept. 27 when the NSFL attendees take part in the university’s Community Smudge Walk, which honours residential school survivors and children who never made it home.
“When we heard about the opportunity with the Football Jamboree, we jumped on it, because we just felt it was a natural for us,” FNUC Vice-President, University Relations, Gord Hunchak said from the FNUC’s Saskatoon Campus.
“You’ve got a couple of hundred high school students from northern Saskatchewan coming down to Regina for a weekend of football. To be involved in that and have them come to our campus during that time, get introduced to our campus and get introduced to our university, we considered that an invaluable opportunity. We couldn’t pass up on that.”
The NSFL players and coaches are invited to the FNUC’s community meal, which follows the Smudge Walk. As well, the NSFL party and representatives of the FNUC will sit together at the Roughriders game.
“Having our logo on their shirts is a big deal to us,” Hunchak said. “When they all head back home, they’ll be able to show that off to all their friends and family.
“The biggest reason we partnered with the Roughrider Foundation for the Football Jamboree was to be able to show off the campus, show off the university and show off our programs to the students, just to give them a look at future opportunities that they might not have considered.
“We’d love to have them all as university students once they finish high school and we hope that they really enjoy themselves during the Jamboree.”
The inaugural Jamboree was held in 2014. The NSFL, formed 13 years ago, originally consisted of a handful of teams.
The six-a-side circuit now has two teams from Cumberland House (the Islanders and NAMS Warriors) along with the Pinehouse Lakers, Beauval Voyageurs, Sandy Bay T-Wolves, Ahtakakoop Titans and Air Ronge Huskies. The latter team is from Senator Myles Venne School.
Two well-established teams — from La Ronge and Creighton — have seen their programs grow to the extent that they have moved to larger leagues within the Saskatchewan High Schools Athletic Association.
La Ronge’s Churchill Chargers are now in a nine-a-side conference with Nipawin, Tisdale, Melfort and Foam Lake.
The Creighton Kodiaks are in a 2A six-a-side conference along with Wakaw, Hague and Shellbrook. Karakochuk coaches the Kodiaks in addition to serving as the NSFL’s commissioner. Creighton and Churchill will join the seven NSFL teams at the Jamboree.
“We always count the nine northern teams in the Jamboree, because we all started together,” he says. “We all use the same budget together. We all have the same meetings together.”
Karakochuk is the third commissioner in league history, following Mark Williment and Gabe Andrews, both of La Ronge.
“We wouldn’t be in this position without them,” says Karakochuk, who took over from Andrews six years ago. “They were huge in developing it.
“I just kind of took it over and I’m keeping it running, because I think it’s important.
“It has been a success and we expect it to keep growing.”
The growth also takes place off the field.
“The kids are going to school,” Karakochuk says. “That’s a hard reality up in the north. I think it’s a hard reality everywhere, but in the north it can be harder.
“Keeping kids in school is huge. When you play school sports, obviously that helps. Football is a little bit different. It brings the whole community together.
“Football has brought that. It has done so much, whether it’s going to school, getting better grades, or finishing high school and graduating.
“As well, we get to go to these Jamborees. They’re going to watch a Roughriders game, which is pretty cool.”
Meanwhile, interest in football is heating up.
“It has grown so much now that everyone wants to play football in every one of these communities,” Karakochuk says. “They’re striving to play football and now we’re getting junior leagues and junior teams.
“We have four northern teams that start football in Grade 7, so that has been a big positive. We have flag football now and we go to a flag tournament in the north, so it has really grown that way.
“They take pride in their field. We put our score clock up. We have a media centre now. We broadcast our first game over the radio. Things like that have been taking off.
“All this stuff matters to the kids and it’s helping the teachers across the board develop some more role models.
“We still have our problems. Nothing’s going to be perfect. But school sports matter. It helps a lot with what it does to bring a community together.”
The football community as a whole plays an integral role in the success of the NSFL.
“There’s so many people I would like to thank,” says Karakochuk, having already acknowledged the two previous commissioners.
“Bob Coffin in Prince Albert organizes all the officials for us so that we can do our games.
“The Roughrider Foundation, with Marnie Forsberg and Cindy Fuchs, and Football Saskatchewan, with Cody Halseth, have done so much for us.
“They’ve brought us to Regina for the Jamborees and helped us out with officials and provided us with a little bit of money to support our league. They’ve done so much for us.
“We can say how great it has been and everything, but we can’t forget all the people who have made it happen.”
