Skip to content

Eagles land on Team Alberta

From going provincial to international.

From going provincial to international.

Foothills Eagles standouts Parker Nakamura, Payton Burbank and Keaton Neish impressed at the 2016 Alberta Summer Games football tournament in Leduc so much so they earned three of the coveted spots on Team Alberta U16 in advance of the International Bowl.

Cam Burbank, the president of the Foothills Eagles, has seen the development of the players first-hand coming up through the association.

Nakamura has evolved into one of the top offensive lineman in the province. The Okotokian made the Calgary Bantam Football Association’s Bantam Selects and was voted the league’s top lineman in 2015.

“He’s been one of our better offensive linemen throughout the years in the Eagles program,” Burbank said. “Just a consistent kid, works hard.”

The versatile Neish has seen time behind centre as an athletic quarterback, as a primary runningback and more recently settling as a slotback/wide receiver.

“He’s developed and blossomed into a great all-around athlete,” the coach added. “Great hands, smart player, always in the right spot, aggressive. He’s a real coachable kid and I’ve almost adopted him as one of my own.

“Great kid, great family and he’s going to be a great player for years to come.”

An elusive runningback, Payton Burbank has been putting his name on the scoresheet as one of the top players out of the backfield in southern Alberta for several seasons.

“He has a way of taking the team on his shoulders and making other kids around him better,” said Cam, Payton’s father. “He’s really a good leader that way, I don’t know where he gets it from, but he seems to come by it very naturally.

“It’s really exciting to see them go from where we were to taking things to the next level.”

Zone 2 defensive linemen Nathan Teitz from Springbank and Matthew Bruce from Chestermere also made the Team Alberta roster.

As per Football Alberta, details of the 2017 International Bowl are not yet available. The past two events have seen the Alberta squad travel to Arlington, Texas to play at the home of the Dallas Cowboys.

For more information on the team go to footballalberta.ab.ca


Remy Greer

About the Author: Remy Greer

Remy Greer is the assistant editor and sports reporter for westernwheel.ca and the Western Wheel newspaper. For story tips contact [email protected]
Read more



Comments

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks