Photo courtesy Ian Cooper

Last year start through three games:
Varsity: 0-3
Junior Varsity: 1-2

Last year finish:
Varsity: Missed playoffs
Junior Varsity: Missed playoffs

Players to watch

WR Anythony Powless
QB Ben Hall
WR Ben Crocock
OL/DL Matt Tait

Varsity

Brantford Bisons coach Dan Padmore has been with team for 4 years as varsity head coach and 14 years total with the organization but even he didn’t see last year’s one-win season coming.

“It’s not at all what I envisioned but we did not have a full roster to work with. We were in every game but ran out of juice having to go both ways all game,” he said.

This year, however, Padmore says there is depth on both sides of the ball.

At quarterback, Ben Hall and Mike Knevel are starter material and making the move to varsity is last year’s leading OVFL junior varsity receiver Anthony Powless.

Hall threw for 1966 yards last season with the JV team with 11 touchdowns and 11 picks. He averaged 16.8 yards per attempt and finished the season with a 75.2 passer rating.

Powless had 939 yards come by way of his hands and feet alone. He had 6 touchdowns on 41 receptions and averaged 22.9 yards per reception.

Another big cog on offense is Dalton Laughlin, a returning 6’6” offensive lineman who Padmore expects to protect his skills players.

The Bisons start the season at home against London, a game Padmore says will be good, to an extent, for the team even if they lose.

“It will be a challenge but I do see a lot of good things coming out of this game, win or not. This game will not say who we are as a team this year, but I do believe some eyes will be opened,” he said.

Team president Don Macdonald fully endorses the coaching staff and says they’ll be great for the players.

“We have excellent head coaches at all levels and they all have solid staffs…We expect our youngsters are going to learn a lot about football and they will have every opportunity to improve as student athletes,” he said. “Beyond that, we believe all our teams are capable of bringing home championships”

Junior Varsity

Junior varsity head coach Ilyas Zylstra says he and the rest of the Bison coaching staff have been working all off-season to reverse the team’s fortunes after they barely missed the playoffs last year.

Zylstra says last year’s team’s was composed of great individual players that lacked team chemistry. His impression of this year’s team, composed of all but one returning player, was that they were smaller physically but, thanks to more team functions, are bonding better.

“This is a team sport not an individual sport,” he added. “So I think if we can get them on that page right from the get go we’re going to be in good shape for when the season starts.”

According to the coach, the smallness spreads from the secondary to receivers and even the offensive and defensive lines. But Zyltra maintains that what they lack in bigs, they make up for in mobility, speed and athleticism across the board.

The only player returning to the Bisons’ JV team this year is outside linebacker Shane Pasek. He started last year as a rookie and was a leader on the team.

Also on defense, Zylstra says lineman Matt Tait, a two-way city all-star last year is a nice piece for them.

“He’s going to be big for us on both sides of the ball if we get to use him that much, if he doesn’t get drained,” he said.

Zylstra says there’s a lot to like on offense as well. The coach himself having enormous experience as a wide receivers coach, including a 5-year stint with Team Ontario, is impressed by Grade 9-er Ben Crocock.

Crocock, who goes to the same high school as starting quarterback Austin Sault, is a track athlete and the second fastest kid in Brantford. The coach says Crocock has good timing on his jumps, nice hands and runs his routes well.

The fastest kid in Brantford, Zylstra says, is Bisons’ running back Tristan Almas.

“Those two guys on offense are going to be speed demons for us,” Zylstra said.

London will be in town to face the Bisons game one. Zylstra says his team has already gotten an early jump on the Falcons by watching game tape from last year and studying their tendencies.

He says London is “always, always, always” a tough game and says it could mean a lot down the road.

“We’re definitely trying to get our kids prepared for this game because we feel that London could potentially be our toughest game of the year,” he said. “So we expect nothing less than hard-nosed football. .. their front seven is probably going to be very good so we feel the battle in the trenches are going to be very important for this first game.”