Jordan Carriere, Armand Schellenberg, and Zach Strong started their own sports podcast at the start of 2021. More than one year later, the founders of the ‘306 Fantasy Football Podcast’ were able to hand over a cheque of $2,000 to KidSport Saskatchewan.
For Carriere, he wasn’t sure when the podcast would air its first episode. After sitting on the fence between making the podcast or not, he was convinced to finally get it rolling. As a high school football coach, it became a passion to share some insights of the game, while remaining a fan at the same time.
“The three of us talk football all the time when we’re at work, so we thought why don’t we start this podcast “ Carriere said. “We had some people asking for advice and our thoughts on different things about football, so that’s kind of what got it started. When COVID hit it gave us some downtime, and we decided to do it. Worst case scenario we make an episode a week, and at the end of the day we just get to talk about football.
“It ended up building into this bigger brand and we took it to social media and we got involved with this charity too. I turned into this big ordeal, and it snowballed pretty quick.”
After reaching out to local businesses and growing their own name, it became a goal to support a charity at the end of the NFL season. Local sponsors were a big help along the way, and the charity donation came as a result.
“We started small off the hop and we had a couple of small sponsorships to start.” Carriere said. “That was a good start just to get us going. We were very fortunate that Limitless Gear became our first major sponsor. We ended up approaching them part way through our opening year, and gave them an idea of how we’re doing things, and how we wanted to get involved with charities. We wanted to get involved with local businesses, and they put themselves forward as a major sponsor for the year.
“As we progressed into the playoff season and almost to the completion of the charity work, a lot of other businesses jumped on board with our major event at the end of the year, which was a Super Bowl watch party at the Rock Trout Café. We had raffle tables and 50/50 draws for charity. As soon as those businesses heard the word ‘charity’ and money going to a good cause, they wanted to jump on board.”
There has been a push in Saskatchewan since the pandemic started to support and shop local. With more local businesses like Source for Sports and Fresh Air Experience jumping on board, Carriere said it was awesome to see some community own stores supporting the podcast.
“We started supporting the phrase ‘Sask helping Sask’. With our name being 306 Fantasy Football, we’re branding ourselves around Saskatchewan. It was awesome for us to be able to give back to Saskatchewan as well. When you look at our sponsors, it was nice to be able to give back to Prince Albert, because the three of us are from Prince Albert. The whole idea was that we’re supported by people in Saskatchewan and most of our listeners are from Saskatchewan.”
Being high school football coaches also had an impact on their choice of charity. Growing up with a love for the sport and working with student athletes to grow their talent, it was important to give back to the sport that gave so much to them.
“We focus around football, and we coach football, so we wanted to be able to give back to the people that we contribute to.” Carriere said. “The football kids of Saskatchewan, the high school football, the little tykes football, all those types of things. Those are the types of places where this money might be able to go back and support. That’s what we’re talking about when we say Sask helping Sask.”
On February 2, Carriere, Schellenberg, and Strong wrote their cheque to KidSport. The $2,000 donation is hopefully the first of many more to come for the podcast crew. Carriere says they’re hoping to support another charity next football season.
“We have a few ideas in mind for charities. I think we’re looking at Jumpstart. That was something that we kind of threw the ball around with over the last little bit. We don’t have anything confirmed yet, but that’s something that we’re looking at. Obviously with us focusing on football, we’re looking to support the charities that like to support sports. We’ll be reaching out to Malcolm Jenkins to hopefully be able to partner up with him.”
You can check out the 306 Fantasy Football Podcast on Facebook. The link to listen to all of their episodes is also on their Facebook page.
@kyle_kosowan • sports@paherald.sk.ca
