Lions starting new chapter in story
For longtime followers of the B.C. Lions, there is much about this training camp that is strange and unfamiliar.
Bill Reichelt, the Lions’ trainer for more than 40 years, has finally retired, and there’s no Kato Kasuya, the longtime equipment manager who died this off-season. Travis Lulay, the Lions’ quarterback for a decade, isn’t here. Nor is Solomon Elimimian, Manny Arceneaux or Rolly Lumbala.
Mark Washington, the longtime defensive coordinator, is gone along with Don Dorazio, the eternal offensive-line coach. The entire coaching staff, come to think of it, has changed along with the support staff. There’s also a new star quarterback and who knows how many new players.
So it’s apparent the Lions are starting a new chapter in their story and given the CFL team’s lack of success over the last number of years, that’s to be expected.
But a figure is also missing from this camp, a man who leaves a massive void in the heart of the franchise, and even though it was time for a change and there is excitement about this new era, it’s still difficult to conceive of a Lions training camp without Wally Buono.
“You know what, I’m not saying it’s been easy or tough,” the old Lion says of his life in retirement. “Do I miss the grind of having to get up at five and going to midnight? Do I miss being on my feet all that time?
“What I miss is being around the players, the coaches, the fans. It’s an exciting time of year. But I’m fine where I am.”
This day, Buono has just returned from Seattle where he spent four days with his grandkids. He took them to the park and the zoo. He watched movies with them. In short, he did the kind of things grandparents are supposed to do with their grandkids that he’s never had time for. Until now.
In Kamloops, meanwhile, the Lions have started life in the post-Wally world and the break has been clean and decisive. DeVone Claybrooks, the new coach, is very much his own man who has a clear idea of how he wants his team to look and play.
Quarterback Mike Reilly gives the franchise star power at the game’s most important position. Look up and down the roster and there are only three players you identify with the Buono years: T.J. Lee, Hunter Steward and Bryan Burnham.
It’s difficult, in fact, to remember that just six months ago, Buono was coaching this team and still very much the franchise’s most influential figure.
Now, he’s little more than a ghost around Kamloops but if that bothers him, he does a convincing job of hiding it.
“I can talk to (Lions GM Ed Hervey) every day but I don’t think that’s the right thing to do,” Buono says. “Do we text? Yes. But Ed’s focused on what he’s doing. He’s trying to build a team. When we communicate it’s usually not about football. I hit him up the other day for a donation and he was very generous.”
Hervey said he’s invited Buono to training camp but, thus far, he’s declined.
“He has an open invitation,” Hervey said. “Knowing Wally he doesn’t want to be a distraction.”
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss it.
Buono left Montreal to play at Idaho State during the first Nixon administration and, since that time, he’s attended more than 50 training camps as a player, coach and administrator. Think about the changes he’s seen. When he was with the Alouettes, he remembers Marv Levy had a reputation as a players’ coach because he limited the full-contact two-a-days to
four times a week over the two months of camp.
Read that sentence again slowly.
Not surprisingly there were a lot of training camp fights in those days. The most memorable, according to Buono, came between offensive lineman Ed George and defensive end Junior Ah You, two CFL Hall of Famers, who went at it for several minutes and took several players to break up.
“That’s how it was,” says Buono. “It was that intense all the time. If you didn’t buckle up, they’d run you off the team.”
As a coach, Buono said he loved training camps because, for four weeks, his life was about football and only football.
He could assess talent. He could toy with his roster. He could build his team.
He remembers Allen Pitts showing up to the Stampeders’ camp in 1990 after a couple of years away from the game and thinking, “I don’t think this guy will make it.”
Pitts would go on to have a Hall-of-Fame career with the Stamps.
There was no such confusion the first time Buono saw Cam Wake with the Lions.
“He took a rep in one-on-one with (former Lions offensive tackle) Jason Jimenez and it was like we’d won the lottery.”
There are so many of these memories stored in Buono’s hard drive: memories of great players and not-so-great players, funny moments and serious moments, time with his coaches and time with the game he loved.
And now he has time for his grandkids.
Since retiring, he says he’s fielded a couple of job offers but none that captured his imagination. Next week he’s going to a banquet in Regina. He’s scheduled to attend a speaking engagement in Kelowna in support of minor football.
Beyond that, “It might not come around and that’s fine, too. I’m not looking for work. But if that opportunity comes around, you never know.”
In the meantime, life will go on. For the old coach. And for his team. But it will never be the same for either.