VS 2008 - Repeater Has No Controls In Page Load

I have a repeater that during the page load I want to go through all checkboxes and check the ones should be checked. I am bound to a sqldatasource control. Here is the code. when I run the for each loop during page load it has nothing for controls.count. I also tried prerender in case the controls werent bound yet.

<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="univList" DataSourceID="UnivDS">
<HeaderTemplate>
<a href='javascript:deselect();'>Deselect All</a>
<table>
</HeaderTemplate>
<ItemTemplate>
<tr id='univtr<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "companyid")%>'>
<td><input type="checkbox" runat="server" ID='univChk' onclick="javascript:toggleRow(this);" text='<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "companyid")%>' /></td>
<td><%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "companyname")%></td>
</tr>
</ItemTemplate>
<FooterTemplate>
</table>
</FooterTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

Code:
For Each check As Control In univList.Controls
If TypeOf check IS HtmlInputCheckBox AndAlso ids.Contains(CTYPE(check, HtmlInputCheckBox).Value) Then
CTYPE(check, HtmlInputCheckBox).Checked = True
End If
Next