Head coach Jamie Peters will find out this Wednesday night if the Steinbach Regional Secondary School's football program is ready to take a very important next step.

The Sabres new players and parents meeting will take place April 12th at 7 p.m. at the SRSS and Peters is confident that numbers will justify the start of the school's junior varsity football program.

"We've been experiencing more and more push back from parents within our school that they would like a JV football team," said Peters. "Obviously with all the other sports we have and the benefits that JV can have for our grade 9's and 10's within our building playing any sport, and getting more playing time closer to their age level, we think that it's in our best interest moving forward to try and meet the request of our parents and students. We have the coaching staff in place, we've ordered the equipment and now we just need to ensure that our numbers for our Spring Camp show up. I'm pretty confident we'll hit the 30-35 mark for both squads."

"It's kind of the next step in terms of where we want to be as a school and where we want to be as a football program," added coach Peters. "We're looking to get up to that "AAA" level. We've had a lot of success in "AA" the last couple of years making it to three straight championships. The opportunity to move up to the next level is finding a place for our grade 9's & 10's to play football and develop as football players."

Peters says there are so many benefits to having a junior varsity football team at the SRSS.

"The last couple of years with grade 10's on our team, we had a lot of guys who haven't played football before and they're just sitting and learning. That's a tough ask for kids and parents to show up to practice three days a week and not have an opportunity to play because they're just not at the size or skill level of those grade 11's and 12's. Having a JV team gives those kids a place to develop. We're very excited for that opportunity. I think kids will come out if they can compete more at their skill level and age level."

It's hard to believe but the Sabres football program is entering year eight.

Steinbach Regional has played in four finals and won two championship banners in seven years.

"Success definitely helps but it also hinders," Peters said. "Because we've been so successful, kids feel that if they haven't played football before, it's too late for them. But in reality it's almost the complete opposite. We're looking for kids all the time. We're looking for kids to fill certain roles on our team. About half our team hasn't played football before. We think if we have JV, it might move to 70% of our kids who have never played football until grade 9. So we need those kids to come out if they're interested to give it a try. High school age is a great time to start a contact sport like football. You can still catch up and learn all the rules and we're excited about those things."

"It's intimidating for these kids to show up to camp in April and May when they're not attending our school and showing up to a school that has 1,700 kids," said Peters. "Coming from their small feeder schools and practicing with our high school program can be intimidating. We want to make sure those kids feel welcome. If they don't show up now - if they all show up in September - we don't have that JV team in place for them unless we know that the interest is there now. That's what we're really trying to get across to the parents of those grade 8 students, to make sure they participate in Spring Camp and that starts April 24th."