St. Lazare planning to field junior football team

BY MICHAEL PIASETZKI

The Quebec Junior Football League (QJFL) could return to the West Island this season, but a big question still needs to be answered for that to happen.

How many local 18 to 22-year-old junior-level players really want it back?

The St. Lazare Football Association has announced it would be ready and willing to field a team in the league playing out of Westwood Junior High School in St. Lazare. It would be called the Stallions, same as all other St. Lazare feeder teams from atom to midget. It would, however, be managed and financed differently than the others. An initial training camp to be run by the St. Lazare midget coaching staff is scheduled to take place at the St. Lazare Sportplexe beginning March 29. If the team should have any hope of hitting the field in August, an encouraging amount of players, presumably around 40, would have to show up. “We’re going with the premise that if you build it, they will come,” said St. Lazare Football Association president Anson Williams. “Sometimes you have to take a chance. If we can get eight players from the St. Lazare, Lakeshore, North Shore, St. Laurent and Valleyfield regions, then we’ll be all right. We can work from there.”

If the junior Stallions do join the QJFL this year, it would replace the now defunct North Shore Broncos, which folded its tent last April after the North Shore Football League decided it was not in the business of operating and financing a junior football team. One of the league’s founding franchises along with the Châteauguay Raiders in 1981, the raison d’être of the club had always been to provide an option for players still at university and wishing play for a varsity team afterward, for 0those attending CEGEPs that don’t offer football programs, or for those in CEGEPs that do have football teams but who would prefer another option.

Williams said the junior Stallions would continue in that vein.

Anyone interested in trying out for the proposed junior Stallions can call Williams at 514-773-0394 or go to the St. Lazare football website at www.stallionsfootball.ca.