From My Camera Roll: USports & NCAA The Grind

Happy Friday! Are you feeling a bit tired today after staying up to watch the 2020 CFL Draft? With all the anticipation and preparation for our broadcast on CFL.ca for the draft I will admit I am moving  pretty slowly today and am anticipating a pretty chill weekend. Marshall and I had a blast doing the 2020 Draft coverage for CFL.ca and I wanted to send another massive CONGRATS to all of the players drafted last night – what a huge accomplishment. For this week’s From My Camera Roll I wanted to stick to the draft theme – if you’re new to this weekly blog you can get the background here. For those who are back thank you and I have loved seeing your posts on social media #CFLCameraRoll thank you for sharing your CFL memories!

In honour of the CFL Draft I wanted to share a few photos from my camera roll from filming season two of The Grind where I worked out with CFL prospects ahead of the combine and draft to see what goes into combine prep. I had the opportunity to learn how to run the 4o yard dash with Robbie Smith and Matthew Boateng which, as you might have guessed was harder than it looked.

Robbie was busy training in Waterloo and I remember being super impressed by his power and speed.We used sleds to add resistance to the 40 yard dash, removing it eventually to sprint full speed. This was my first introduction to just how technical the motions are and how much precision there is to the perfect start. It was no surprise that he was drafted by the Argos 9th overall in 2019 after watching his performance in the gym followed up by a super successful combine.

After working out with Robbie we went to Fresno California to train with Matthew Boateng. We wanted to tell the story of a Canadian player prepping for the CFL combine who was a part of an NCAA program. I remember Matthew’s flat out speed. He was quick, lean, athletic and super agile. Again, no shocker that Matthew was drafted second round as a territorial exemption, 18th overall, in the 2019 Draft. What are the chances that both of these guys ended up in Toronto!?

While we were in Fresno we went out for dinner with Matthew, his girlfriend our our CFL gang Kyle and Rob for dinner. You can see my love of crawfish is unwavering since our trip to visit Dionte Spencer in Louisiana.

Thanks for another fun trip down memory lane – looking forward to seeing more of your memories #CFLCameraRoll and congrats to the 2020 Draft class.