Fall football and the RMF

The Carillon talks minor football and gives an outline of games for those who want to follow

The fall season is around the corner – some may say it is already here. Normally when we think of fall, we think of the leaves turning yellow and brown, the sunset coming sooner in the day, the crisp air in the morning and evening, and pumpkin spice everything. But the most exciting one of them all is the football season! Two weeks ago, on September 9, the National Football League (NFL) began their season. Today, we are going to talk about the game of football and teach you what football really is, and we are going to talk about a league/organization that operates in Regina – Regina Minor Football (RMF).

We are going to be talking about American football, which means that there are tackles, field goals, and touch downs – not the European football (our soccer) where there are slide tackles, goalies, and goals. The football that we are talking about today is the football that uses the CFL rules, just for younger age groups. A game of football consists of four 15-minute quarters. The goal of the game is to reach ten yards before getting tackled down, or going out of bounds. Players can reach those ten yards by running with the ball, throwing the ball, and passing off the ball to another teammate. If a team doesn’t make it that ten yards, they have two more chances, and on the last chance they can choose to run again or kick the ball to the other team. If a team does make the ten yards successfully, they keep running until the player with the ball is down or out of field. Once they reach that goal, the team keeps aiming for ten yards until they get to the end zone. Once a team brings the ball to the end zone, they are awarded a touchdown, and in a touchdown a team can shoot for a field goal or a safety.

Now, these are the rules that the Regina Minor Football League follows. This league works out to have five groups of players: the Mighty Mites (under 10), Atom (under 12), Peewee (under 14), Bantom (under 16) and the Victorias (all girls team). If you haven’t noticed, the teams go until the age of 16, which means that kids can no longer play in the league after about grade 10. This way, the league gets them ready for high school teams and games. Once they are in grade 10, they can try out for high school teams with more experience. This also allows the grade nines to have that additional year, if they choose, before going up against the bigger players in grade 12.

The RMF league normally runs their games on the weekends. That means if you want to take your little ones over to go and see a game to see if they want to play, you can do that! Or you can do it for yourself before asking them, to avoid the fear of your kid getting crushed to pieces. It will be okay – football is a team sport, and they have pads to protect your kids as much as possible in a full-contact sport.

Let’s say you go and watch a game, and your kid really wants to join. Sadly, the fall season has already started, but there is a spring league! This league runs from mid-April to mid-May, so you still have time to get your kids excited and pumped for spring season. It’s fall, which means you can still take them out to go play catch, run some drills, get them ready for the season – and get yourself in the fall spirit!