By Andru McCracken
They only started playing flag football last year, but McBride’s tiny Robson Valley Junior Academy brought home the B final trophy this weekend from Kelowna.
Coach Peter Hulka said that the private school tournament was a lot of fun.
“Some of them have some large numbers of students; our little school of 30 kids did well,” he said.
Teacher Jerry Stanley said the school only started practicing at the end of September, but things got off to a good start.
“We had never actually played a game before and we won our first,” he said.
This year the team started practicing hard in the fall and experienced great improvement.
“Peter did an amazing job with them,” said Stanley.
Stanley said 11 students between Grade 6 and 9 went to the tournament. Grade 10s are allowed to play as well, but the Junior academy didn’t bring any Grade 10 students.
Stanley said the final game against Abbottsford was a thrill to watch.
“It was a tight back and forth game the whole way,” he said. “The game went into overtime and the junior acad- emy won with a touchdown.”
Stanley said the kids loved playing at night under the lights.
Coach Hulka said he had a lot of natural talent to work with.
“We got a group of kids that really listen and want to excel at what they do,” he said.
“We were able to go from just learning to winning.”
