Football to the Max
Max Doney has spent his entire football career as an offensive lineman, one of the unsung heroes locked in trench warfare in a battle for yardage along the line of scrimmage.
For the Stamford Hornets, at the high school level; and for the Niagara Generals and Niagara Spears, at the club level; the 18-year-old Niagara Falls native has either lined up on offence or on defence. Some seasons, he played on both sides of the ball, often in the same game.
However, while offensive linemen usually don’t earn headlines, except for the wrong reasons, such as allowing a quarterback to be sacked for a big loss of yardage, they don’t go unnoticed by the people in the know. College recruiters are always on the lookout for players with the strength, technical skills and football IQ to help their teams protect the passer in the pocket and open holes on running plays.
Before accepting a scholarship offer from University of Toronto, the 6-foot-1, 280-pound Doney attracted interest from McMaster, St. Francis Xavier and Western.
The son of Mark Doney and Debra Adlam will be following in his father’s footsteps by going to Toronto, but that’s not what tipped the scales in favour of the Varsity Blues.
“The academic program is amazing. I know for sure they are No. 1 in Canada,” said Doney, who intends to major in kinesiology with the career goal of becoming a teacher.
“I feel I would really enjoy teaching.”
In many respects, he already is a teacher. On the gridiron for Stamford, the four-year high school veteran is regarded as a leader by Hornets head coach Brad Martin. At student council, he chairs the meetings as Stamford’s prime minister.
Corvairs Falcons
His teaching extended to coaching when he helped mentor linemen on the Niagara Generals bantam team.
“I really enjoyed it, I had a lot of fun.”
Doney learned a lot by spending time on the other side of the clipboard, crediting his coaching experience with helping him become a better football player.
“When you coach, you basically have to watch the very fine differences,” he said. “It’s very easy to say ‘Oh, he blocked and he did well,’ but you have to look at how they’re playing and judge specifically the small things they may have done wrong that they can improve on.”
Because coaching slowed down the game for him, breaking plays down into small segments, Doney was able to correct the “small things” that he was doing wrong.
“It definitely helped increase my football IQ, my understanding of how the game worked.”
He said the O line is more about making sure teammates in the backfield aren’t hit rather than about tackling or being tackled.
“Normally, a quarterback only needs about three seconds to get the ball off,” Doney said. “If I can block my guy for three seconds, then most of the time, depending on the situation, that is a good job.
“I feel I am satisfied if I can block my guy for at least three to four seconds.”
University of Toronto, which offered a combination academic-athletic scholarship renewable annually and worth up $4,500 a year, would like Doney to shed some pounds while bulking up and adding the muscle he will need to face veterans as much as five years older.
In addition to a strength and conditioning regimen, part of the preparation for his first university training camp will be playing summer football for the Spears.
Doney wrestled with the decision to go out for his club team because he didn’t want it to cut into his training. In the end, he figured the best way to prepare for football was by playing football.
“I didn’t want to go into university having not played football since October, when the high school season ended,” he said. “I want to play in the summer, so when I go into training camp, football is still fresh in my mind and I’m still relatively in season shape.”
With seven new O linemen coming in and with several veterans leaving due to graduation, getting playing time in his freshman season with the Varsity Blues isn’t out of the question.
“I don’t have a guaranteed spot, but there is a very good chance for me to earn my position once I get there for training camp.”
Doney can expect to compete against older, more-experienced players in his first few years at university, but that won’t be a new experience for him. As a 10th grader on Stamford’s senior teams, he saw some action against players in Grades 11, 12 and 12B.
“I was 15 and I was going against kids who were 19 and I was still doing alright,” he said. “It is a little in the back of my mind a concern, but it’s not something I am terrified of.”
In Canada Athletic Financial Awards, or athletic scholarships as they are more commonly known, don’t ignore academics in the rush to put talented athletes into a university’s lineup. Doney has long appreciated that he would not have been eligibile to receive the offer from Toronto, or any other university for that matter, had he not been averaging at least 80 per cent in his courses in high school.
“My priority was always to get a good education. I figured that football was a way to better that education, and a way to get into better schools,” he said. “I thought U of T was the best fit because it had the football, but also the level of schooling was just that much higher.”
Martin, Stamford’s head football coach, praises Doney as a “very cerebral and technical player. “Technically speaking, he’s extremely sound and that even gets better,” the coach said. “Mentally, he understands the concepts of the game.”
“He was very much a team leader and captain. He’s a good one.”
Martin doesn’t anticipate that Doney will have much difficulity adjusting to football at the university level.
“It’s a big step up and I believe Max has the character and wherewithal to understand this, and understand that in university you’ve got to work your way onto the field,” he said. “Some kids when they go to these training camps, after they’ve been good locally and in high school and on clubs, see the level of competition, and see what it feels like to get hit by a fifth-year senior who just came back from a CFL camp.”
“Some of those kids fold because they can’t take the fact that they’re not the top of the hill. That’s the nature of the game, and that’s one of the things I think draws Max to the game is his willingness to compete and get better, and get to the point where you become elite.”