By Jeff D'Andrea

PACI, St. Louis team up on gridiron

Sep 8, 2011 | 8:11 AM

The Prince Albert Collegiate Institute Golden Bears football program will be getting some help from their neighbours to the south, as the Golden Bears and St. Louis High School have signed a co-op agreement.

The agreement marks the first time the two programs have merged, which means that PACI could receive close to 10 players from St. Louis to play on their six-man football team this year.

Traditionally, St. Louis was partnered with Prince Albert Carlton, but chose PACI this season as there was more of a need.

“St. Louis has had a co-op agreement with Carlton for quite some time, but it seemed like a good fit for us and a good fit for them to have their kids come join us on our small team,” said PACI head coach Graham McGregor.

“As far as players are concerned, there will be about 17 from PACI and we’re probably looking at seven or eight from St. Louis.

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“We also saw some really athletic guys come in from St. Louis last week and (we’re) looking forward to incorporating them into the team as well.”

PACI is also receiving some coaching help as St. Louis teacher Brennan MacDonald will be one of four coaches added to the staff. The other three bench as well as PACI’s Troy Semenchuk, Brett Cornelson and Jason Bourdon.

As far as the PACI talent is concerned, McGregor anticipates a good mixture of youth and experience.

“We seemed to have a lot interest from our Grade 9’s in the spring coming out and hopefully going forward, those Grade 9’s will start their careers with us so we’re looking forward to that,” said McGregor.

“We have a good solid core of guys in Grade 11 as well which have played for two years already, so we’ll be leaning on them fairly hard.”

Some veterans the Golden Bears will look for big contributions from are Andrew Carswell, Jordan Blagden and Cody Hall-Shand.

jdandrea@panow.com