The Plenty Wildcats will become the third Conference 6 team to open their season on Friday when they travel to Clavet. The Clavet Cougars defeated Rosetown Royals 62-22 last week, and the Plenty Wildcats will look to avoid a similar result.

Clavet is the odd team out when it comes to the teams in Conference 6, with Outlook and Biggar joining Rosetown and Plenty as west central teams in the grouping. The move was made for reasons that included COVID spacing, and making sure divisions ended up equal.

“They try to do it by location, distance traveled, and there are a lot of teams out by Clavet but they try to keep things equal so that’s probably how they ended up in our conference,” explained Rosetown’s coach Mitch Wintonyk, “They’ve been in the conference before, so it probably just made sense for SHSAA to do it that way.”

Clavet could be known by many as a football town. It might be small in size but is surrounded by a considerable crop of acreage families, and also the luxury of living by the city where some kids may leave to play ball. They are usually a 6-man team, but years have happened where numbers took them to a 9-man team.

West central’s teams are split into two divisions, and Plenty’s coach Jason Kelly was another person surprised by the SHSAA’s decision. The reasons given to him were the same in geographical locations and COVID, but he still wonders how the designated schools were split up.”

“It’s kind of frustrating what SHSAA did with the divisions this year,” explained Kelly, “6 man is split into 1A and 2A, and we are the only 1A school in our league. Kindersley and Unity are 2A so it would have made more sense for them to play with the 2A schools and us to play with 1A, but we will see how it goes.”

It won’t matter where the Wildcats play, as Plenty has a proud football history and will be ready to go wherever they are placed. Kelly has coached for a long time, and he has seen a great deal of development come through the system during his time. This can be thanks in part to the junior football program, something that has seen very strong commitment for what is a very small community.

“When you are a small school like we are, you need everybody to play and some luck to stay healthy enough until the end of the year.”

He said it was tough to lose the season and the experienced players that would have came with it last year, and that many of this years players will be experience their first taste of some real football come this weeks regular season match-up. While the experience won’t be there, the football IQ of graduating junior players has certainly showed and will look to be a major positive come game day.

“7 or 8 years ago I guess is when junior football started here,” recalled Kelly, “It helps quite a bit when they get to high school. You don’t have to teach them absolutely everything.”

The Wildcats football program is a tag team effort between Kelly on the field, and coordinator Trish McDonald behind the scenes. Both are no doubt very excited to have the Wildcats back on the gridiron this school year.