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BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Westdale Middle School was very busy over Christmas break while its students are at home. The Gridiron All-American Bowl brought the fourth rendition of its all-star game to Baton Rouge this week. Some of the best players from Louisiana and surrounding states — and countries — traveled to the Red Stick for some December football.

“Just to have a lot of people come down here during this time for the game that I love, man, is big time,” said Marcus Randall, the Chief Operating Officer of Gridiron Football and a member of LSU’s 2003 National Championship team.

The goal of this postseason event is to get more eyes on under-recruited high school players, but also to give the prep stars another opportunity to suit up and play.

“All the things about the offers are pretty cool, but I just love football so much. I don’t care about another offer. I care about playing another football game,” said Zeke Carwile, a high school player from Alabama.

Zeke was one of several out-of-state players who traveled to Baton Rouge to practice and participate in the game this week. For some players, this experience became a competition to prove which football recruiting hotbed is truly the best.

“I feel our style of football we play here in Louisiana, it’s hard-nosed football,” said Colin Coates, a state champion football player at Catholic High School.

A place that is far from a recruiting hotbed is the “Great White North,” a nickname for Canada. The Gridiron Bowl managed to get two Canadian football players to come down south and play in the bowl game.

“I wanted to come down south to play here because I wanted to get better as a football player and see what it takes to play down here at the next level,” said Jayden Gurzi-MacDonald, a running back from Ontario.

Jayden and Owen Lock, another high school player from Ontario, decided to put their skills to the test and see what the American Football game is all about. What they found is that it’s a bit of a different beast.

“It’s very different from Canadian football, like we play 12, on 12 down. Here, it’s 11 on 11. The concepts are different,” Lock said.

The players from SEC country doubted the Canadians at first.

“I know that there’s a couple guys that are maybe skeptical, like, ‘What are the Canadian guys doing down here?’ But we’re hard-nosed football players even if we’re from another country,” Gurzi-MacDonald said.

Jayden and Owen took it upon themselves to prove that the guys from the north could play and keep up.

“First day, we ran the big cat drill, and I really showed out in that and made everyone realize, ‘Oh, this Canadian kid can play football,’” Lock said.

Based on all the reviews from the staff and fellow players, that mission was accomplished.

“We’re just glad that we can prove to everyone that even though we’re from another country, we do belong down here playing football because we’re going to work just as hard as you, if not harder,” Gurzi-MacDonald continued.

Jayden and Owen hope to find an opportunity to cross the border and play college football in the United States.

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