Dreaming big: Youth football league kicks off at Bloomington Park

Written by Andy Griffin
August 2, 2014
SUN Youth Football League Registration Day, St. George, Utah, August 2, 2014 | Photo by Robert Hoppie, ASPpix.com, St. George News

ST. GEORGE — Even little guys have big dreams.

Saturday morning several hundred little guys, with their parents, gathered at Bloomington softball park with visions of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady dancing through their minds. It was sign-up and draft day for the SUN Youth Football League, with youths from third to eighth grade registering for the upcoming season of tackle football in southern Utah.

During the huge event, the youngsters were timed in sprints and cone drills, weighed in, issued helmets and pads and drafted onto teams. League president Darius Alton estimates about 1,200 players will participate in southern Utah (including Parowan and Cedar City) and Mesquite.

The league is new and fills the void of Youth Football USA, which left the area. The new league is approximately half the cost of the old league, but still gives young men the opportunity to compete in tackle football at a young age.

St. George News photographer Robert Hoppie, whose son is participating in the program, documented the event and gives us this photo gallery:

Click on photo to enlarge it, then use your left-right arrow keys to cycle through the gallery. 

Email: sports@stgnews.com

Twitter: @oldschoolag

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2014, all rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Griffin has been in sports media since 1989 and has covered BYU, Utah State and the Utah Jazz as well as all sports in southern Utah. A journalism graduate of USU, Andy has carried on a dual career as both a sports writer and a sports broadcaster and has been heard around the country. He has also been published in USA Today, Sport magazine, The Sporting News, Fairways magazine, the Los Angeles Times and locally in the Deseret News, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Spectrum. Andy was “The Voice of Region 9 sports,” for many years. He also hosted a daily sports talk show for three years called AG in the a.m. Andy has been married to his college sweetheart Shelly for 28 years and has five children ages 13 to 25.

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