The Swift Current Comp. Colts football team will hit the field tomorrow afternoon for their first practice of the season.

Coaches and players will meet at 2 p.m. with equipment being handed out ahead of their 3:45 p.m. practice.

"The first couple of days are always fun because the coaches are fired up and the guys are fired up and the field looks good and we're just ready to get going," Colts Head Coach Derek Murdoch said.

Swift Current lost about half a dozen players to graduation at the end of last year. Murdoch believes participation numbers will be up this year thanks to several players from the Swift Current U14 Steelers team that won the Moose Jaw Minor Football Championship last fall.

"Lots of those guys showed really well in the spring when they were all at spring camp," he said.

The Colts will spend the next week preparing for an exhibition match in Regina next Friday against Thom Collegiate.

"It will be the first time in a few seasons that we will do a preseason controlled scrimmage," he said. "It should be an opportunity for us to get everybody on the field... and see what high school football is all about."

The competition for Swift Current will shrink inside the SHSAA 12-Aside Rural Football League as the Moose Jaw Vanier Vikings have dropped out. That leaves six teams remaining including the Colts who will begin their season on the road against the Moose Jaw Central Cyclones on September 9.

"I think we're going to be very competitive," he said. "We still don't have a huge group of grade 12's this year. The biggest group of guys that we are going to have is still in that grade 10 and 11... So now we're getting closer. It is a hard league to play in if you don't have a lot of those grade 12 leader-type guys, we've got some."  

The Colts will fall from three home games this upcoming season to two, one on September 16 against Weyburn and the other against Yorkton on September 23. 

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