Foley working hard to develop west NL football

Chris Foley is doing what he can to grow the game of football on Newfoundland’s West Coast.

Foley, a longtime football fan and former player in the Corner Brook Touch Football League, has found a new calling during the past three years: coaching.

He’s also in the process of helping develop a local youth flag football league.

Foley’s doing it all out of his love for the game and wanting to pass on that same passion to future generations.

PLAYING AND COACHING

Foley’s first exposure to the sport of touch football came in the late 90s when he attended local Corner Brook Touch Football League games two of his uncles had played in.

He says he had only just previously developed a new love for the sport of football itself.

Around the year 2000, he says, he showed up to one of the games.

He was about 16 years old, not really old enough to play in the league.

But he says the league was struggling to attract enough players at the time and his uncle’s team needed players. He stepped in for one game and became a member of the league.

“I haven’t looked back since,” says Foley.

He played until 2014, with a couple years off in between as he was away for work.

Foley says he was never a particularly great player. But he has a mind for the sport.

In 2017, he was approached by a parent of a high school student who was trying to form a touch football team that would join the local league.

“I thought about it and I said, ‘I know I have a good mind for football, I can see a lot of plays and I have the knowledge, and what’s the point of having the knowledge if you’re not going to share?” he recalls. “I decided to step in and coach those boys. Since taking that on, coaching has just really taken over. I enjoy coaching more than I ever enjoyed playing.”

The two aspects Foley enjoys most about coaching are the game planning and player development.

A high school team, known as the Knights, was put together to join the Corner Brook Touch Football League – the local adult league. He coached the team for three years. Over those three years, he and his team developed in tandem. He learned to become a better coach while they learned to improve as players.

“Last year, we just started to gel,” says Foley. “Everything came together.”

All season, they only lost one game.

They made it to the semifinals where they lost to the eventual champions.

However, with most of the players on the team graduating from high school and moving away to continue to their education, they didn’t have enough players to bring the team back this year.

Remaining players have joined other teams in the league, and Foley has remained around coaching one of the teams, the Boohaws.

“It’s been going well so far,” Foley says.

GROWING YOUTH FOOTBALL

The coaching, however, is just one very important part in his plans to grow the game of football in its various forms on the West Coast.

Foley still has greater designs for football.

He and a group of parents have worked to establish the Western NL Football Association. The group was recognized by Football Newfoundland and Labrador as an official youth football league this past March. Sessions have been underway with youth, in which he has focused on teaching and building the fundamentals.

When he spoke to the West

Coast Wire, Foley expected eight to 12 youth at the next session and hopes it will continue to grow.

The first step is building interest and the second step, he hopes, will be to bring the sport around the west coast. Foley doesn’t have any exact targets in mind, but in a year or two, he says, he hopes to have enough coaches and players in a particular age bracket to be able to start a youth league on the west coast.

The ultimate goal, he says, would be to incorporate as many communities as possible on the west coast and to start up a regional league. He feels it’s important to have the youth play a wider variety of competition to better develop their skills as football players.

“Once you play against one team four times, you know that team and you don’t actually get any better,” says Foley. “You need to play competitive football, or competitive anything, against more teams to completely round out your game and to always build on what you have to keep getting better.”

Someday he hopes to go beyond flag football and introduce tackle football to the west coast.

Foley believes tackle football is the most inclusive sport because all different body types are needed to play different positions. It’s valuable, he feels, as it provides kids who may not be able to excel in other sports the opportunity to play something.

If anyone has any questions or is interested in signing up for sessions, Foley says they can contact him through the group’s Facebook page, Western Newfoundland Football Association or by contacting him by email at chris.foley@ footballnl.ca.