Augsburg's football team is in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, for a game on Saturday against an adult club team, the East Side Eagles. Don Stoner, Augsburg Sports Information Director, is on the trip with the team and is filing daily reports.
PHOTO GALLERY
WINNIPEG, Manitoba – The first day of the Augsburg College football team's trip to Canada was spent, for the most part, on a bus. The Auggies left Minneapolis at about 7:15 a.m., and, after a lunch break in Grand Forks, N.D., the team arrived in Winnipeg at about 4:30 p.m.
The Auggies arrived at the home field of its Saturday opponent, the East Side Eagles, and did a brief walk-through before going to the hotel. The East Side Eagles, a local football club with both youth and adult-level teams, installed a new FieldTurf-style playing surface this spring, and the Auggies' game on Saturday will be the first on the new field. In fact, the goalposts are scheduled to be installed on Friday. The players remarked that the field was incredibly comfortable to play on, much like the team's own SprinTurf surface at Edor Nelson Field.
The players also had an interesting reaction to the much larger Canadian football field surface. The playing field is 110 yards long – 55 yards to the “C” for “centerfield” in the middle, and is much wider than the American-style surface. The end zones are 15 yards deep, instead of the American 10-yard end zones. It will be an interesting adjustment for the pass-oriented Augsburg offense (or should we say “offence” in Canadian-style English?) with the larger field for Saturday's game. The game will feature one half of American rules (11 players, four downs), and one half of Canadian rules (12 players, three downs).
Many Auggie players ventured to the Market District, an area of restaurants, for their evening meal, while others relaxed at the indoor pool and waterslide in the hotel, to close Thursday.
On Friday morning, the Auggies will be treated to a boat tour of Winnipeg, followed by a 90-minute practice at the East Side Eagles' field. Augsburg is scheduled to play the Eagles' adult team on Saturday at 11 a.m.
