Logan Wilk and RJ Skinner have a lot in common with each other.
Both are former Yorkton Regional High School students.
Both played football there.
Both continue to play football.
Both are pretty solid dudes by anyone's standards.
You will not knock Wilk off his feet and Skinner is bigger then most his age.
Both are now in university.
And both were tagged as redshirt freshmen in their first year attending classes at their respective schools.
Redshirt freshmen?
A What???
Anyone unfamiliar with the various terminology used in the football world likely won't have a clue what redshirt means, myself having been one of them up until not too long ago.
Redshirt freshman is among the many terms applied in sports to describe the playing status of a certain athlete.
A quick google search does little to explain how the term redshirt freshman applies to football in a literal sense.
I am disappointed to report that you get more google hits for Star Trek crap then you do find some football information.
Apparently any minor character who is sent down into hostile alien territory and killed is commonly referred to as a 'redshirt' amongst the Trekkies.
Also, in the Navy, redshirts are the ones that load and unload weapons, artillery and various other equipment for use in the Canadian Armed Forces.
After 20-minute plus interviews recently with the former YRHS football players, the name redshirt was brought up several times (mostly by me). I don't see the connection to the sport of football. I still don't see it, but what I found out is that the term is applied to student/athletes to give them a couple things: a) a chance to learn the university game without the stress and pressure that any first-year player will no doubt feel, and b) it works to extend their eligibility with the school.
In the United States, all college athletes are eligible for four years of competition. Even if a player in a soccer match comes onto the field for the last five minutes of the game, he or she has just used up a year of eligibility.
If a player is badly injured towards the end of the season, they may decide to redshirt the following year.
Apparently redshirting works in both football and soccer. A lot of first-year players expect to be redshirted as not a lot of guys are going to be ready to step up against a bunch of 20-23 year-olds and play to their potential against guys who are also that much old then them.
During a game this past season, Skinner's University of Manitoba Bisons took on Wilk's University of Saskatchewan Huskies in Saskatoon.
If the stats compiled by the Bisons were right, and Skinner acknowledged that "it's a whole different ball game" up here, there were close to 5500 spectators at that particular football game.
Wilk said redshirting this past season with the Huskies was good because it gave him the chance to re-learn the sport, playing at a much higher level then he did here at YRHS.
He spoke of a practice one day during his redshirt freshman year when he was flattened by a teammate.
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