(Dallas Dahlseide/650 CKOM)

By CKOM News

FOOTBALL WEEK

Riders, Football Sask. announce first-ever ‘Football Week in Saskatchewan’ this fall

May 30, 2022 | 10:02 AM

You can mark it down as one of the biggest football weekends of the season.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders are teaming up with Football Saskatchewan to grow the game at the amateur level in the province.

“Football Week in Saskatchewan” will kick off with the Riders taking on the Edmonton Elks on Sept. 16, followed by two rivalry games the next day.

The reigning PFC-champion Saskatoon Hilltops will visit the Regina Thunder, followed by the University of Saskatchewan Huskies duking it out with the University of Regina Rams in some U Sports action.

All games will be played at Mosaic Stadium.

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Riders president-CEO Craig Reynolds said the planning started last year and finally just came to fruition.

“It actually started in the fall. We had to align our schedules and that actually was one of the more complicated parts of it,” Reynolds said.

Now that everything is set up, Reynolds can’t wait to see what comes out of this weekend.

“The goal is to try (to) increase attendance (and) get more exposure to university football and junior football. We’ve got four amateur football teams that generally play each other. You can come to a Rider game and hopefully stay and watch some great university and junior football,” he said.

Huskies head coach Scott Flory said that even though it’s a road game, it will be awesome to play in front of a large number of fans and help grow the game to new levels.

“People who have the pleasure to see our game, to see university football, the more the people that come out to it, the more they’ll fall in love with it,” Flory said.

The Riders and Huskies organizations have always had a great partnership and Flory says it’s only going to get better.

“Their help and support is massive. Our athletic department, we do a great job. We’ve got a ton of fans here in Saskatoon, we’re traditionally among the best in the country in attendance for university football games but we’re always trying to do better,” Flory said.

“I think that this partnership and what this will do in exposing all four of those amateur men’s football teams is going to be big for all of them.”

Ticket packages will be released with the option to go to all three games during the two-day period.

Jeff Yausie is the executive director of Football Saskatchewan and says he hopes these games will have massive turnouts in the stands.

“We already know that we have (a) passionate fanbase. People love football in Saskatchewan,” he claimed.

Yausie says this is going to be huge for the younger generation.

“The fanbase is growing older,” he said. “One thing that will grow our fans forever is younger kids having a great experience playing the game and they will grow into fans and continue the momentum that we have.”

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