Regina Minor Football enjoys successful first weekend of games

Regina Minor Football kicked off a unique season over the weekend.

RMF executive director Len Antonini said the league was trying to come up with a way to play games this year. It got some good news last Wednesday when, Antonini said, the province increased the mini-league limit from 50 people to 80.

“We had taken a look at being able to play and use a different system with all of our coaches physical distancing and then (the province) bumped the number from 50 to 80 which made it a lot easier for us,” Antonini said.

“There’s only one spectator allowed per player and they followed the rules. They physical distanced (and) they cleaned their hands. It was a good weekend and really good football.”

The province confirmed mini-leagues for outdoor contact and non-contact football have been increased to 80 people. The province said this is due to the large number of players on a single team.

Antonini said all leagues will be playing nine-on-nine this season, which falls in line with Football Saskatchewan’s return-to-play plan.

“It didn’t look that much different. We narrowed the field down (and) the kids were really engaged. The football was actually really good. The teams have been practising for pretty well a month and they played their first game and they were ready to rock and they were pretty happy for it,” Antonini said.

Antonini said RMF officials are hoping to have their season schedule approved by the province. The schedule would have teams play another one back to back, practise for 14 days and then play another team back to back. The goal is for this to happen for four different sets of games.

A team from Yorkton is able to come into the city to play, according to Antonini, but no Regina teams will travel there for games. He also says players from White City, Balgonie and the surrounding area are able to play in the league.

Antonini said registration is down a bit, and the league did a bit of a restart when it realized games could be played.

“We lost about 80 kids who decided not to restart and play the games,” Antonini said. “We’re at about 850 kids. Usually we’re around 1,200. Due to COVID, I thought it was going to be a lot worse than that. At the beginning of June, we only had about 400.”

Antonini said RMF also livestreamed the games online.

“That went very well. It was a pretty successful week and I think (the season) is going to go pretty good,” Antonini said.