Each day best yet for prospects
Coach Reed will take one underage player to main camp
For each of the eight young athletes who make up the underage players at the Edmonton Eskimos rookie camp, the last three days have been a career highlight.
For one player, the dream will get extended at least a little longer.
At the conclusion of the team’s rookie camp on Friday morning, Eskimos head coach Kavis Reed said that one of the eight players would be invited to the main camp for an extended look.
“One will be invited to the main camp,” Reed said on Friday morning at Commonwealth Stadium. “He performed extremely well. We were monitoring him for the last couple of years, thought he would perform well and he did, and we’re going to invite him to the main camp.”
Reed wouldn’t specify which player would be invited. Attending the camp are University of Alberta Golden Bears quarterback Curtis Dell, Edmonton Wildcats Kael Schryver (defensive back), Brett Morrow (linebacker) and Taylor Henry (wide receiver). Edmonton Huskies quarterback Trevor Erdmann is joined by his teammates, offensive lineman Quinn Glanz and slotbacks Yannick L’Abbe and Anthony Barrett.
“That’s a good opportunity for those guys to get some exposure and see how things work at the professional level,” Reed said. “It encourages them and encourages the program and, for our benefit, if we see someone who has the ability as this (one) young man has, he’ll get the opportunity to be invited to the main camp.”
The eight-player contingent at rookie camp is much larger than the one-man show that was Regina Rams quarterback Mark Mueller a year ago. The Eskimos have reached out to the local football programs this past year in an effort to boost talent and ultimately, or potentially, land themselves a local player who could contribute to their team.
Dell said he’s hurrying to adapt to the speed of the game at a higher level, but that he’s enjoying himself.
“It definitely has (been fun),” he said. “I’ve been learning lots and I’m grateful for the experience and I’m happy to be here.”
Entering into his third year at the U of A, Dell said he’s learning a lot from fellow quarterback Matt Nichols.
“He’s always calling out the plays in the back and letting us know what’s coming next,” Dell said. “He’s always helping us.
“(All of the quarterbacks) are so knowledgeable. They all come from different backgrounds and different systems. It’s so many different pieces of information gathered into one. It’s nice.”
Henry, a 19-year-old who played his high school football in Camrose, said he wasn’t intimidated by his fellow receivers — some of whom are 10 years his senior.
“You know, it wasn’t (intimidating), to be honest. It was really humbling to be playing with guys coming from Texas and places like that, but at the same time we’re all rookies,” he said. “Even though I’m younger, we’re all rookies and we’re experiencing this together. It’s just a really good experience.”
The trio of players questioned said the speed of the game has been the toughest adjustment.
“Think of the fastest guy you know and there are 10 of them here,” Dell said.
“The fast, high-tempo pace, it’s very good,” Barrett said. “I wasn’t used to it, but being in camp showed me that everything is high-tempo. If I eventually get here one year, everything has to be fast.”
For the time being, the younger players have gone into sponge mode, soaking up whatever they can while they’re around the Eskimos’ rookies.
“I don’t know if anyone necessarily took me under their wing, but I kind of looked at everybody who came from the States as a mentor,” Henry said. “They all have those extra four or five years on me, some of them almost 10, so just the experiences they bring, I try to take that all in as I go.”
“Hopefully they take back a positive experience and hopefully we make them technically better,” Reed said. “Our job as coaches and it was a mandate, was ‘Don’t try to indoctrinate them in our system.’
“We let them go through the individual drills, go through the meetings and the film, but we’re not going to indoctrinate them in our system and screw their coaches because they’d have to reverse what we’ve done. We simply try to keep it technical for these guys.”
The Eskimos will spend Saturday doing medicals with their entire roster in anticipation of training camp getting underway on Sunday at 2 p.m. at Commonwealth Stadium.