The Melfort Comets Football team held their first-ever alumni game recently and raised roughly $15,000, which will go towards rebuilding a brand new announcing booth.
According to the Comets, the current booth was built nearly 20 years ago and is a little too small. The hope is to build one bigger that will last for the next 25 to 30 years and will provide the team with a facility capable of hosting alumni, playoff, regular-season games or even minor football games in the spring.
The contests featured two friendly battles, first between a green and a black team (the current Comets team got divided in two) and a green and a black team of alumni, whose ages ranged from 25 to 62.
Current Head Coach David Rogers said, especially in the alumni versus alumni game, he’d never seen anyone so happy, regardless of if they were on the winning or the losing side of the game or a specific play.
“It is the first game of football I’ve ever been at where I watched people get tackled with a smile on their face, and those were the smiles of the alumni. They were pretty excited to put on the gear again and play a game against other alumni.”
Alumni weren’t the only ones who travelled down for the contest, however, as former Comet and current Saskatchewan Roughrider Logan Ferland brought some friends with him.
“We had four Roughriders there,” said Rogers. “Anytime you can have the Roughriders around, it’s great. They do a lot to promote football in our province, and in our communities and we were very fortunate to have a Roughrider who is an alumnus of our program, Logan Ferland.
“He brought up three other riders, Derrick Metcalf, Josiah St. John, and Michel Picton and they signed some autographs and had lunch with our players. They were also the presidents of our pre pregame practice and the events of the day and during the game. It was great to have them here and have the support from them, you know, they bring in some excitement and all that sort of stuff.”
And while Rogers said he couldn’t guarantee there would be another alumni game as soon as next year, he did say there is significant interest and support to bring it back sometime in the near future.
“Things like alumni games, they take a lot of time and energy to organize and come if you have them all the time, it kind of loses the specialists the special appeal of it. I don’t want to commit to one next year, but you never know, it was a great opportunity, a great fundraiser and a great day for the people to help out and we’ll just we’ll see what next year brings. We’re definitely not opposed to hosting another alumni game.”
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Ben.Tompkins@pattsionmedia.com
On Twitter @BenTompkins_8
