Team History & Accomplishments
The RAMS were established in the early 1960's. While we cannot be 100% positive, we believe the team started in 1962 or 1963. The team's first head coach was Earl Keeley, a former CFLer with the British Columbia Lions. Because this is our first web site, we are always going to be looking for additional historical information and if we are wrong or our information is incomplete in ANY way, PLEASE contact us and tell us who you are and your capacity with any of our past teams. Our present head coach is Jim Skitsko and he can be reached on line at jade2002@shaw.ca. The information contained herein is believed to be correct and we will update our information to ensure its currency.
The RAMS started out as a community team for players from the Sherwood Park area which was then a small community of less than 5000 people. The first team was in the neighborhood of 20 players and featured a strong "iron man" component. In fact, the RAMS and many other bantam Edmonton teams were featured regularly on a CFRN television show called "Saturday's Heroes" and was televised from the old Kinsmen Field, now the home of the Junior Edmonton Huskies Football Club near what is today the Kinsmen Field House. The team was and still is composed totally of 100% volunteers from the coaches to the training staff and of course the executive.
The club has experienced many highs and lows during its more than 35 years of existence including winning and losing several championships. However, the lowest point was most certainly a fire in the 1970's which destroyed the club's practice facility and most of its equipment. Out of the ashes of defeat, the RAMS rebuilt a program of winning teams under great coaches like Bob Dolman, a local RCMP, who led the team to Championships in the 1970's. The names of Coaches Sandy Slator and Tonni Anderson also rate highly in terms of involvement in Sherwood Park Rams football. However, Coach Dolman was certainly not the first great coach of this team. When we are able to get more information regarding past coaches of our team, we will be sure to post it. More recently, the success of the RAMS has been helped immensely by the coaching contributions of Dan Bass, Vic Chmelyk, Herb Dobbins, Irv Loucraft, and Peter Smith, who all helped guide the RAMS to championship seasons. In the last two years, the team saw Coach Perry Meriot move on to a successful high school career after being with the team for 7 seasons. Another great Rams' coach, Jay Meraw, also retired to continue coaching his high school team. This past season (2003) saw Defensive Coordinator Mark Feledichuk also move on to a high school team after helping entrench the Rams as one of the most dominant defences in bantam football. The team continues to be guided by experienced successful coaches.
The RAMS' philosophy is based on helping our youth build a better life through football. "Football is fun but education is forever" is a motto that can be seen in the team's clubhouse but the club "walks the talk" with the establishment of an educational bursary fund designed to help RAMS alumni who wish to pursue post secondary education. This bursary fund will help the RAMS be winners on and off the field!
FOOTBALL WITH A FEELING
The Sherwood Park Rams of the Edmonton and District Bantam football league are 1975 champions. Such a simple statement seems commonplace in todays sports-filled society, but it did not come easy with the Rams from Sherwood Park, Alberta.
The story began when I arrived on transfer from the Ottawa Crime Laboratory to the Edmonton Luboratory in 1973. Having coached minor league football in several cities during my service I was interested in becoming community-involved in the Edmonton area. I purchased a home in Sherwood Park, a community near Edmonton with approximately 27,000 residents. We enjoy a small town atmosphere in a metropolitan environment.
In 1974 I became involved with the Bantam football program as head coach of a team of youths aged 13-15 known as the Sherwood Park Rams.
My first priority was to seek qualified coaches who shared my football philosophies and could impart basic football sense to the players. Fortunately, I came upon Sandy Slator, an accountant with Pacific Western trucking. Sandy had experience with the Winnipeg Rods and the St. Vital Bulldogs and was a great start for a coaching staff. Slowly but surely others began to volunteer to join the camp of the Rams, Chuck Geale of the Alberta Forest Service became a line coach. Chuck played previously for New Brunswick University. John Grimmon, of Murdoch Contractors, became the equipment manager. He had an important credential for this job as he holds an industrial first aid certificate.
Wayne Jeffery, a Civilian Member in the Toxicology section of the Edmonton Laboratory became the defensive backfield coach.
Garry Hewitt, of the Document Section, became the assistant offensive backfield coach, and from the Photo Section we enlisted Civilian Member Glen Childs to round out the defense.
Training camp began with five-day-a-week workouts commencing the first week of August 1975. Practices continued nightly until the first game during the Labor Day weekend. The support of the coaching staff was overwhelming, to say the least. The result was better than our expectations. Jim Poliquin, defensive tackle and Geof Lineham, middle linebacker anchored a defense that became known as the best in the league, yielding a scanty seven points in seven league games. The offense lead by quarterback Ryan Dotto and a speedy halfback with sure hands named Dale Raddis exploded on opposing teams with exciting plays to accumulate an amazing 264 points.
The defensive unit played some games in which the opposition did not obtain a first down in the entire game. In fact the defense did not yield an offensive touchdown all season. The only seven points then came on a fumbled punt return in their own end which was recovered for a touchdown. With a regular season record of 7-0 the team seemed fully prepared to take it all, but playoffs in the Edmonton and District league are another story. The quarter final saw us continue with a 24-0 win but the semi-final spelled disaster. St. Albert shut off our offense and punished our defense as they dashed our championship hopes with a disappointing 13-6 loss.
Preparation for the 1975 season began early and the coaching staff worked diligently over the winter months to reconsider the areas of improvement which would have to be made to win the title.
The graduating and returning players got together in the spring and delivered 8000 Sherwood Park Directories to raise funds to sponsor the team for the 75 season. The Sherwood Park Recreation Board donated the use of an equipment shack as a clubhouse and the team began to gain pride.
With new enthusiasm, practices started in early August, but misfortune was not far behind. Two weeks into the practice sessions a fire gutted the equipment shack and made the team homeless.
When difficulties start there seems no end. In the opening game the team lost 25-13 and no fewer than seven first string players came up injured.
The second game saw the team begin to mold as they defeated their arch rival, Notre Dame Raiders 8-0. Fullback Scott Wiseman, who broke his ankle in the previous season seemed to have found a home as a hard nosed runner and the players began to build around him. The remaining regular season games showed a marked improvement as the tide began to change. The Recreation Department completed repairs to the clubhouse and the team began to win. Scores of 27-0, 41-6, 12-6, 63-0, 53-6 and 58-0 rounded out an impressive season. Spirit became the overwhelming feature of the team as the players rallied to defeat bigger and in most cases favoured teams.
With tension running high the team headed to Kinsmen Park for the championship game against the defending champion Safeway Seals. Two teams boasting 9-1 records for the season locked horns and provided some three hundred fans with an exciting finish to the 75 season. In what was an exciting offensive game from twenty-yard line to twenty-yard line the offenses displayed awesome power, but inside the twenty-yard lines the defenses rule supreme. The only score came on a 15-yard pass from quarterback Jamie Tainton to halfback Doug Read who leaped high into the air at the Seals three-yard line, made a remarkable reception and then beat the last Seal defender into the end zone. This was championship football and teams that get there don't quit. But the defense held, and the last play say the Rams ground the ball and preserve the victory.
The championship win was not this teams only success as they also became the first team in the history of the league to finish in first place in their division in three successive years. It was the first football championship ever for Sherwood Park, and Ram fullback Scott Wiseman became the first player in Edmonton bantam football history to break 1000 yards rushing in one season. Wiseman completed the regular season with 1165 yards and 18 TDs.
For the Rams an emotion filled win, for thirty young men an event they won't forget and for the coaches a feeling of pride.
(This article was published in the RCMP Quarterly magazine in the Winter of 1976 and was written by Corporal R. A. Dolman, a former Head Coach of The Rams)
If you can help the Rams build a more complete history file, please contact our club historian, Jim Skitsko at jade2002@shaw.ca