Respecting Rolly: Lumbala embodies spirit of Lions
Lions veteran has earned deep respect of teammates over course of his career
To fully understand, the depth of respect with which Rolly Lumbala is held by teammates and his coaches, we’ll skip the usual testimonials about his work ethic and mettle, and instead, take you to the Lions’ locker-room on the evening of Sept. 7.
The Leos have just downed the Ottawa Redblacks 26-14 in a game that Lumbala carried the ball zero times and caught zero passes.
It’s also two days after he lost his father, Eugene, who brought his family from Gabon in Central Africa to Montreal in search of opportunity and a better life, who had been living with the Lions’ fullback for almost a year as he battled cancer.
After a brief speech by head coach Wally Buono, Lions special teams coach Jeff Reinebold steps up, announces there will be only one game ball passed out on this night, and hands the ball to Lumbala. The Lions’ erupt. They chant Roll-ee, Roll-ee. They engulf him in a group hug.
When they release him, Lumbala is fighting back tears.
“It meant a lot,” says the big man, the emotion still evident in his voice. “That was one of the hardest days of my life, and knowing I had to fly to Calgary the next day for the funeral, that’s something I’ll never forget.”
There, try putting moments like on the back of a football card.
“You know there comes a time when the message you’re trying to send has to be carried by the players, and you have to have a certain status in the locker-room to be able to do that,” says Reinebold. “That status is earned, and it has to be earned over time by the way you train, the way you practice, and the way you play. Rolly is a guy who has earned that status in our lockerroom.”
That and a whole lot more. Lumbala is now wrapping up his 11th season with the Lions, and if you were just going by his stats line, you’d wonder how he made it this far. His biggest season carrying the ball was in 2016, when he amassed, if that’s the right term, 46 yards. His biggest receiving year came two years earlier when he caught 14 passes for 125 yards.
This year, he has two carries for three yards and two catches for seven yards. In last weekend’s win over Edmonton, Lumbala caught a five-yard pass. It was his longest gain of the CFL season.
So it’s a good thing Lumbala is that player who — all together now
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— does things that don’t show up on the stat sheet but surface on special teams and the running game, where he blocks like a madman.
“True respect is earned and it takes time,” says Reinebold. “You don’t win respect by giving great effort one game or one month or one season. You do it over the course of a career. The players all know who those guys are and they know Rolly.”
“Character guys who are also good on the field are hard to find,” says Buono “He understands the team concept and his role.
“Now, when he gets the ball, is he excited? Yeah, and everyone is excited for him. But he’s never come up to me and said I’d like to touch the ball a couple of times a game. Those things aren’t fake.”
As for the origins of that character, you don’t have to look long or particularly hard to draw the connection between Lumbala and his father.
Eugene Lumbala was a trained engineer when he left Gabon with his family of three and moved to Montreal. In time, he would earn a doctorate from the University of Sherbrooke before the family relocated to Calgary, where both Eugene and wife Tchitala landed jobs as educators. There were some difficult years. Lumbala doesn’t go into great detail but says: “When you’re a kid you don’t completely realize everything that’s going on. We always had a home and food on the table.
“When you get older, you realize they didn’t always have jobs, but they still made it happen.”
Lumbala found sports at St. Francis High School in Calgary and eventually earned a scholarship at Idaho, where for a spell, he was actually featured in the offence. He was eventually taken by the Lions in the second round of the 2008 draft and he’s now the longest-serving active Lion. He hasn’t missed a game in eight seasons.
Lumbala is asked if he’s aware of the respect with which he’s held by teammates.
“I don’t look at it that way,” he said. “I’ve been blessed to play with so many hall of famers: Brent Johnson, Cam Wake, Geroy Simon. They taught me how to work, how to be a pro. And I had this foundation from my parents.”
Shortly after the family moved to Canada, Lumbala’s younger brother Steven was born. He would follow Rolly to St. Francis, where he was a star running back. He then graduated to the University of Calgary, where he was all-Canadian.
Steven Lumbala was drafted fifth overall by the Alouettes in 2013. A year later he retired from the game, took a job in the oil industry, and is now enrolled in law school, where he pursues the opportunities his father envisioned for his family when he left Gabon.
“They left everything behind for us,” Lumbala says. “As you get older, you realize the sacrifices they made. He did whatever was needed.”
Which means this apple didn’t fall very far from its tree.