Cobi Payne and the rest of Team Alberta rewrote the script at the Western Canadian Challenge U16 football championship in early July at Winnipeg.
Read more: Nikiforuk on top of the West with Alberta’s U16 football team
The Albertans, including Payne’s Lloydminster buddy and Holy Rosary High School teammate Daniel Nikiforuk, bucked a trend in defeating a Saskatchewan juggernaut in the championship game.
“Yeah, they’ve been on a hot streak for five years and they had never lost,” said Payne, a five-foot-11, 165-pound linebacker. “We’ve been losing to them in the finals forever now. We just went out there as a team and as a family, and we beat them.”
It was as though Alberta’s 34-8 victory was a double championship, finishing first while also solving a formidable foe.
“It feels great,” said Payne, wearing his gold medal back home in Lloyd. “Just experiencing it and growing closer to teammates, it feels even better to share that gold with a bunch of friends.
“It’s hard to explain the feeling that you feel with your brothers, after putting in all that work, to go out there and play the championship team that hasn’t lost for five years and beat them for the first time with Alberta, it’s unreal.”
Just like his longtime Lloydminster teammate Nikiforuk, Payne was successful in cracking the Alberta lineup in his second year trying out for the provincial team.
“It kind of put a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, going into this year’s tryouts, wanting to make that team,” Payne said. “And then when I did, I just felt a great relief.”
Junior Raiders graduates Payne and Nikiforuk already knew some of their Alberta teammates from playing against them in the Capital District Football League. Last fall, the Lloyd-area team won the bantam division in that league and went on to capture the Tier 3 provincial championship.
Cobi Payne (left) and Daniel Nikiforuk represented Lloydminster and Holy Rosary High School as part of Team Alberta, the U16 Western Canadian Challenge champions. John MacNeil – Meridian Source
The Junior Raiders’ coaching staff included Payne’s father Cole, who played junior football in Edmonton after a high school career at Lloydminster Comprehensive.
“It’s a different feeling,” said the 15-year-old Payne, comparing last fall’s Alberta bantam title to this month’s Western U16 championship.
“With the Junior Raiders, I go to school with those guys all the time and we talk about going to provincials together and beating out whoever we find there. But when we went to Winnipeg, I got to live with those (Team Alberta) guys for a week and learn about their families in a different sense.
“It’s hard to compare the feelings each time, but they’re both great experiences.”
From flying to Westerns to taking home bags of Alberta swag, along with the gold medal, the tournament shapes up to be a lifetime memory for the teenagers.
“Yeah, it was really special,” Payne said. “It was really fun to be able to talk with people from all across Alberta and just learn about the differences in their day-to-day life, compared to mine. It was really eye-opening to see the different places that they’ve come from and their stories.”
Payne’s story takes another turn this September as he enters Grade 10 at Holy Rosary and steps up to the reigning provincial 3A high school champion Raiders. He believes his Team Alberta experience sets him up well for senior high school football.
“It’s going to be a lot different,” he said. “We do run a spring camp, so I got to play with some of the guys that played last year. It’s a much different experience than playing on the Junior Raiders, playing with older and better guys. They taught me a lot and really helped my progression, when I played for Alberta.”
Along with his linebacker duties, Payne also drew special-team assignments and blocked a kick on a late PAT in a 46-0 victory over Manitoba.
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