St. Clair College's success slowly changing the OFC landscape

The St. Clair College football team is commanding the field this season. In fact, their last three wins were a pair of 83-0 games plus a 58-0 victory in a game cut short in the third quarter.

“To say that the OFC is different than it was two, three years ago, five years ago, ten years ago, 20 years ago, I'm the guy on the sidelines and I can tell in the OFC is in a better shape than it's been in a long time,” said Saints’ head coach Mike Lachance who has been at the helm 16 years.

The Saints are 4-0 midway through the season. The goal is to not only win their conference, but the Canadian Junior Football League national title.

“I talk about it every day,” Lachance told CTV News. “The national championships [are] the next step but certainly there's a bunch of really deserving teams in the OFC that we got to work through.”

A player from the Saints on the night of their 2024 homecoming game (Source: St. Clair Saints)The Saints play two of those teams at home in the next two weeks. St. Clair is hoping to return to the CJFL championship game this year.

“Fair to say we've had our difficulty on the national stage. We lost to Okanagan and we lost to Saskatoon and we lost, you know, handily,” said Ron Seguin, senior advisor to the president’s office at the college.

The goal is to change the outcome. The coaching staff hit the recruiting trail in the off-season and have bolstered the team.

League commissioner Darren Cocchetto says the western teams, like 23-time national champion Saskatoon, have a decided edge on the Ontario conference.

“The financial resources the teams out West have at their disposal dwarf what the teams in Ontario have, except for maybe, say St. Clair.”

The St. Clair College model of attracting student-athletes is working - and being emulated by others, including Sault College who are joining the league next fall.

“St. Clair has seen what works out west - and well, for the last 25 years hasn't worked in Ontario so they're, they're trying to change the narrative there,” Cocchetto said.

Seguin added, “We are not a dominant Canadian Junior Football League team. We are a dominant Ontario League team but that's not the goal.”