The Similkameen News Leader
Sports Page - April 01, 2008
NEW LEAGUE INCLUDES PRINCETON
The newly formed Canadian Junior Touch Football League will be looking to the Similkameen when they start their first season in July.
The CJTFL will have 12 teams, two of which will be in British Columbia and quite possibly one in Princeton.
League President and CEO Richard "Going Long" Renningberg says the league will bring a fresh new twist to the sport.
"Football has always been a long standing tradition in Canada and the CJTFL is no exception. Our exciting new league will field a dozen teams in Year One with expansion plans in place to add another ten teams in Year Two. We intend to put our teams in smaller markets and create a developmental league to eventually draft players into other professional leagues."
The CJTFL will feature players between the ages of 6 and 11 with only one 11-year old allowed per team roster. Renningberg also says franchises are awarded based on what could only be described as an interesting criteria.
"First, as I stated before, we are looking to smaller markets and I mean 'small towns' with populations well under 10,000 people. Secondly, we are not relying on television to help us, as we intend to have all games fed to the internet so we need to be in small markets with reliable internet. There also has to be an abundance of 6 to 11 year olds within a 100-kilometre radius of the team's location. We also need the community to be near a major highway, have an operating airport or landing strip and have either a hospital or trauma unit nearby."
Another interesting twist in the make up of the league is that the communities with teams will actually share in revenues generated through advertising aired during internet broadcasts. The CJTFL has already announced ten of the first twelve franchises four in Ontario, one in Nunavut, two in Manitoba, two in Saskatchewan and one in Alberta. Two British Columbia teams are required according to the league bylaws and preliminary reports indicate that Sicamous and Princeton are the front-runners for those teams.
Should Princeton receive a CJTFL franchise, plans are in place to develop the Rocklin Avenue (former Argo maintenance site) as the new covered stadium complete with an indoor (heated) running track, training site and aquatic recreational facility.
The proposed $17-million dollar development would be paid for in part by a Participaction Grant and monies collected through mass CJTFL-sponsored bottle drives.
