By: Mike Still (@mikestill94)
At age six, Julian Banares got the football itch, and to this day, it hasn’t gone away.
“I think I was watching a CFL game on TV, and then I told my dad, I want to play this. He’s like, ‘okay,’ so as soon as he found sign-ups, he took me over and signed me up to play football. That’s been my sport ever since.”
Banares began his tackle football career as a running back, before gravitating to the quarterback and receiver positions as he got older.
While he wasn’t playing tackle football though, he was fully immersed in the flag version of the sport, something he started participating in when he was eight.
“I think it was just something to do honestly, when the football season wasn’t around,” he says. “It was a spring league, so you still wanted to play football all year round, and as soon as the snow melted, I could remember wanting to play flag football.
“It’s just a fun sport and it’s fast-paced because you’ve got five-on-five. It’s the closest thing you can get to tackle football without contact.”
And boy was he good at it. For example, when Banares was in grade eight, he represented Team Manitoba at U14 nationals. He did the same thing in grade 10.
“I’ve had some pretty good experiences playing flag at the national or provincial level,” he says.
“It was really just exposure to a higher level of competition. Playing against different teams from different provinces and seeing how they play, and being able to see where your strengths as a team were, or even as an individual player. It was really good exposure in that sense, to play against a higher level of competition and to improve your game.”
Banares’s grade 10 year at Sturgeon Heights was memorable for more than one reason though.
It was that season, in 2008, that the Huskies rolled to the Winnipeg High School Football League (WHSFL) AA championship. Their roster included the likes of Ryan Marsh, one of the greatest pivots in WHSFL history. On top of that, there was also Grey Cup champs Kienan LaFrance and Anthony Coombs. Banares also earned the division’s Rookie of the Year nod.
“It was crazy,” Banares says of the 2008 season.
“You maybe take a little bit of it for granted, just because we blew every team out. There really were no close games. Realizing the talent we had, looking back on it now, it was crazy what we were able to do and produce. To be able to be a part of that championship team was pretty special.”
Fast-forward to present day, and Banares is still making his presence felt on the field, as he was part of the Team Manitoba roster that captured gold at last weekend’s senior men’s flag football nationals in Saskatoon.
Among the competition was a Team Canada roster that included Chris Bauman, a former first overall pick in the 2007 CFL draft, as well as former Grey Cup champ Chris Getzlaf.
To top it all off, Banares was named tournament defensive MVP, earning him a nod to Team Canada’s roster for the World Flag Football Championships, which take place later this year in Panama City.
“To be completely honest, getting selected was completely unexpected,” says the soft-spoken Banares.
“I went out to Saskatoon with no expectations whatsoever besides going there and playing and winning the championship. Aside from the personal achievement, I really didn’t expect the invite, so now it’s just going to be preparing for that tournament, and playing at another level of competition which I haven’t experienced before.”