Foster marches in to make his mark
On the surface, there isn’t much to distinguish Otha Foster’s backstory from most players at B.C. Lions training camp.
Foster, the 29-year-old defensive back, took a long and winding road to the CFL. But that isn’t unusual. He says the obstacles he encountered make him appreciate his circumstances, which is another story you hear around every CFL team. Those obstacles also instilled in him a certain mental toughness and resilience, which he now calls on in his professional life. Again, it’s a common theme in the CFL.
But talk to Foster for five minutes and you learn his story is different. Its themes of sacrifice and perseverance are etched so deeply in his narrative that they define him. As he says, when you spend four years between your last high school game and your first college game serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, you learn a little about yourself and what you can endure.
“There’s no quit in my past,” Foster says.
Which a lot of players will tell you. But Foster has lived it.
“He’s seen things the majority of players have never seen or been through,” said Lions GM Ed Hervey, who targeted Foster as part of his remake of the Lions. “You look at Otha Foster and you recognize there’s someone who’d done far greater things than those of us who are in football.
“It was important to me that he become part of our football team. You just know you can win with those type of men.”
Foster, who spent most of 2017 on the Baltimore Ravens’ practice roster, is listed as the Lions’ starting nickel, the linebackerdefensive hybrid, a creation of the CFL. He can also play any position in the secondary.
His CFL career started five years ago with the Argos before stops in Edmonton, where his path crossed with Hervey’s, and Saskatchewan in 2016.
Again, nothing unusual there by CFL standards, but there’s a little more to Foster’s journey.
Raised in Angie, La., an hour north of New Orleans, Foster had designs on playing collegiately before hurricane Katrina upended his senior year. His high school, Varnado, had games cancelled and was used to house Katrina refugees. He tried to walk on at Southern University in Baton Rouge, but that didn’t work and, with few options available, he enlisted in the marine corps.
“I decided to join the hardest and the strongest,” he said. He wasn’t disappointed. Foster spent four years in the corps, mostly as a reservist, while trying to keep his football dream
alive. He says he isn’t insulted when military terms are used in football. He’d just like people to know the difference.
“We go to battle on the football field and we’re brothers, but this is just a game. Out there it’s life and death. Some of them go to war and they don’t come back. I served with those men.”
Foster is asked what he took out of the marines.
“Oh man,” he says. “I’d tell you discipline but I already had that from my father. But I think it elevated that discipline. When you go through marine corps boot camp, you feel like you can make it through anything in life. Training camp can be hard and brutal on the body, but it can’t get much harder than boot camp.
“I believe that’s my edge. There are a lot of guys out here who are fast and big and strong. But you need something that can give you the extra edge physically or mentally.”
And always there was football. Foster had a cousin enrolled at Pearl River Community College in Mississippi who informed him the team was holding open tryouts. Foster walked on, made the team and, not surprisingly, was named its captain in his second year. That didn’t get him a gig with a big NCAA school, but it did lead him to the University of West Alabama, where he played for two seasons before signing with the Kansas City Chiefs.
A year later, he landed with the Argos and has “been rocking and rolling ever since.”
“I mean, every opportunity I have to play football is a blessing,” Foster says.
“Between my last high school game and my first college game was four years. I was in boot camp, marching with my gun, dreaming about playing football. Every time I step on that field, man, I try not to take it for granted.”
Foster didn’t have to look far for his source of toughness and determination. His father, for whom he’s named, was a dialysis patient for 19 years before he died in 2010. Foster was his father’s primary caregiver and helped get him to dialysis three times a week. Otha’s father still coached his son’s pee-wee team and lived long enough to watch him play at Pearl River.
“He was sick for most of my life,” Foster says. “His body was weak, but he was always there for me in football. He always came to my games. He gave me everything he could.”
Now his son lives out his dream. Foster is asked if he’d changed anything in his life.
“Not a thing,” he says. “It’s made me who I am.”
And this you believe.