USS Tigers football ready to roar again

Roger Varley

Almost 40 high school students turned out Tuesday morning for the first day of training for this year's version of the Uxbridge Secondary School Tigers football team.

Football returned to USS last year after a 13-year absence. Head coach Jeff Keeping said the reaction to the new football program was "phenomenal."

The USS Tigers against Paul Dwyer CI in a game from the 2024-25 season. Cosmos file photo

"There's a lot of excitement," he said.

During Tuesday's three-hour workout, the coaches put the potential team members through various skills, setting up a four-station rotation where the hopefuls practiced blocking, passing, pass receiving, running patterns and strategies. At the end of the session, the players played a couple of flag football scrimmages. The youths were scheduled to go through the same routine yesterday and today (Thursday).

The hopefuls are all in Grade 9 or 10, although Keeping said some Grade 11s who played on last year's squad will practice with the team but are ineligible to play until next year when the school adds a senior team to the program.

The Tigers' first home game this season will be a "homecoming" event under the lights on Sept. 18 against O'Neil CVI from Oshawa. There will be two exhibition games before then.

Keeping was continually motivating the players during the practice. At one point he told them: "We want you to be great football players, we want you to be great students and we want you to be community leaders."

One of the tryout hopefuls had her own motivational message. Eloise Kock, starting Grade 9 when school opens, was the only girl attending the tryouts. (Keeping said the team is co-ed.)

She said her only experience with football was playing flag football in a public school gym in Stouffville, but she fell in love with football watching the Super Bowl. She said that, as a ew arrival at USS, she doesn't have many friends in Uxbridge, but noted: "This team becomes your family."

Eloise said her parents were skeptical when she first told them she wanted to play, but later became more supportive, with her father helping her practice.

"I'm hoping if I make it, other girls will become more confident and join football," she said. "I want to inspire the next group of girls."