Work commitments kept Chris Foley away from building a youth football program over the past year, but he plans on forging ahead with his vision for youngsters on the gridiron on the west coast.
Foley took the leading role in working with Football NL to establish a youth football program in Corner Brook and surrounding west coast communities back in the spring of this year and he managed to get about 15 youth to hit the gridiron once a week for an introduction into the sport where there has never been one on this side of the island.
He even had the coach of the Dalhousie Tigers varsity men’s football team come to Corner Brook to put off a one-day camp to spur interest in the sport.
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Football enthusiast Chris Foley hoping to bring full-contact football to west coast
The plan was to get the program rolling again in the fall when students were back in school but Foley had returned to work from medical leave and found himself a busy electrician working out of town for a number of months.
He had a couple of people volunteer to help him grow football, but those people weren’t comfortable trying to run sessions without his presence and couldn’t commit to doing it on a regular basis and Foley had no problem understanding their concern.
It was decided, after consultation with officials with Football NL, to put the program on hold and wait until the spring of 2018 and give it another shot then.
When spring rolls around Football NL will be sending a number of instructors to the west coast and provide potential coaches with the safe contact training all coaches require to coach the sport and there is an even a chance that some players will be coming west to provide a demonstration or perhaps a short game to generate interest among youth on the west coast.
“It’s not something I’m going to give up on,” Foley said. “It’s time consuming and it has growing pains and things like that, but I think with time it will all come around and hopefully within two to three years football will be a common sport around Corner Brook.
He has punched a lot of hours trying to bring football to the west coast and he had hoped things would have moved faster, but he hasn’t lost faith that it can be an option for area youth who wanted to do something different and fresh to the area.
“I think I got the seed at least planted. There are definitely kids around who are fully interested and want to play,” he said.
Making it all come to fruition in 2018 is high on his priority list now that he’s got some time on his hands.
