Spring Camp came to an end last Thursday for the Steinbach Regional Secondary School's junior varsity and varsity football teams.

The Sabres coaching staff spent four weeks working on the basics and going over team strategy.

"We started with about 92 kids at camp trying out the game and we're at about 75 right now," said Jamie Peters who started the football program in the spring of 2010. "Out of that 75, there's really only about 25 kids that have played football before. So you're looking at about 50 kids that have never played and it takes them sometime to get used to the game."

"It's really exciting to see the growth of the junior varsity and the varsity kids and that's going to pay huge dividends for our program in the future with those jv guys coming up to varsity. That will just start limiting the number of guys that have to relearn all those steps."

The varsity and junior varsity teams had controlled scrimmages against both the Miles Macdonell Buckeyes and Garden City Fighting Gophers during the latter part of camp.

Coach Peters says his varsity team held its own.

"I'm very happy with the leadership of the guys coming back and where our program is going." said Peters. "We played tough against a well coached Miles Mac team and then we got better playing a traditionally, the last couple of years, a AAA team in Garden City. We played them really tough. We're looking to make that jump to the Potter Division and it looks like this might be the year that we do that based on the way things look. We won't know that for sure until Friday."

Peters adds it was extremely gratifying to see the junior varsity team become a reality.

"I'm super excited. It's coached by almost all alumni and headed up by Kerry Friesen and Derek Plett. I just can't more proud of those guys and what they've done. They were able to take on those young guys and get them ready. It's really exciting to see. Exciting that my alumni are coming back and helping out and giving back to the game."

Friesen & Plett are the co-head coaches for the junior varsity team while Peters remains the head coach of the varsity squad and oversees the entire football program at the Steinbach Regional Secondary School.

Player and Parent registration is Tuesday, June 6th at the SRSS Theatre beginning at 7 p.m.