The D.P. Todd Trojans vanished from the high school football scene when the team folded just one game into the 2009 season.
That won't be a permanent vacation if it's up to Mike Rositano.
The longtime former head coach of the Duchess Park Condors has a revival in mind for the Trojans and plans to have a junior varsity team back on the field in the B.C. High School Football Association Northern Conference by next season.
This season, as head coach of the Prince George Axemen, Rositano led the team to the Prince George Minor Football Association junior bantam title Saturday when the Axemen beat Quesnel 36-30. Encouraged to see a full roster of 12- and 13- year-old players on his Axemen team, Rositano took the next step by announcing his intention to start up a high school program.
"Our numbers were huge, we ended up with 28 or 29 players and almost half the team is either in D.P. Todd or going to D.P. Todd next year," said Rositano, who grew up in Prince George and has been part of the local football scene for nearly three decades.
"The kids have said there's been a lot of interest but there's been nobody around to start it up."
D.P. Todd folded its program in 2009 due to a lack of players. The mother of one of the Axemen players, Janice Kozak, is athletics director at D.P. Todd and she got the ball rolling at the school. Rositano said D.P. Todd principal Richard Dougherty is also behind the push bring back Trojan football.
Rositano organized a meeting at the school and 54 students attended. He said 61 players have registered.
"We would be the biggest program in the North if all these kids committed," said Rositano. "Our biggest hurdle is gear. We have no helmets or shoulder pads. We're going to need jerseys, pants,
footballs, tackling dummies, everything you need to run a program."
Rositano, head coach of the Northern Eagles juvenile team, has reached out to Dino Geremiah, technical director of Football BC, to try to find some used protective equipment from other teams around the province. There's a good chance the Trojans junior team will be able to rent equipment from the PGMFA, as D.P. Todd did in previous seasons. Bottle drives and a fundraising dinner are being planned to help the team raise the estimated $20,000 needed to get the program off the ground.
A parent meeting will be held at the school next Thursday.
The plan is to form a junior varsity team in 2016 and once the program has had time to develop, if there are enough players, a senior team will be added. Rositano wants to begin a weight training program in February and will start skill development practices in April or May. The first games will be played in May or June and the spring jamboree.
The Northern Conference now has four Prince George schools involved -- PGSS, Duchess Park, College Heights, and Kelly Road -- as well as Correlieu of Quesnel and Nechako Valley of Vanderhoof.
Rositano's assistant coaches from the Axemen team -- Jack Page, T.J. Kyriakos, Matt Kelly and Daniel Stratton and Devin David -- have said they are willing to help coach the Trojans.
The Axemen will play the Interior champions in the BCCFA nine-man junior bantam final, Nov. 21 in Kamloops.
