Timmis has eyes on a bigger prize
On the same night the Golden Horseshoe Athlete of the Year Award was handed a few weeks ago in Hamilton, the national volleyball playdowns got going in Calgary. Yet as the camera zoomed in on the spectator area behind the visitors’ bench during the primetime game, there sat one of the nominees.
Check that. There stood one of the nominees. Not quietly either. The man who had been a finalist for the title of this area’s top athlete was in full voice, absolutely giving it to the McMaster Marauders.
“Just kind of supporting the school,” Mercer Timmis chuckles.
Never let it be said that the 19-year-old Burlington native isn’t all-in with the University of Calgary. Two years after choosing the western school as his post-secondary home, he’s Dino through and through.
The feeling is mutual. The other day, the great-great grandson of Tiger-Cat legend Brian Timmis was named the school’s male athlete of the year. It’s a remarkable achievement for any sophomore, which is why he says he was shocked when he won. But honestly, he basically made it impossible to seriously consider anyone else.
The best running back from this area since Jesse Lumsden, Timmis set conference records with 1,157 yards rushing and 19 touchdowns. He was MVP of the regular-season, the Canada West championship game and the Mitchell Bowl. He was also a finalist for the Hec Crighton Award as the country’s top collegiate football player.
He hasn’t worn the watch he was given, though.
It’s stayed in its box partially because he sees it as a trophy and partially because he feels like something was missing from the resumé this year that keeps him from putting it on. Something that nags at him every day.
“All the time,” he says. “I always think about it.”
That would be the loss in the Vanier Cup to Laval.
In his first year at the school, he and the Dinos made it to the Mitchell Bowl only to be obliterated 45-6 by McMaster essentially in his hometown. That was tough. The Vanier Cup defeat reached a whole new level of anguish. “I think it was a little more painful,” he says.
So, every day in the gym, he and his teammates obsess over it. Laval’s players, he says, were so much stronger. That’s where they can close the gap.
They’ll have to. Because the playoff schedule this year has the western champs facing the Quebec champs for the right to go to the national championship. With the game once again at Laval … er … at the home of the Quebec representative.
He knows it’s possible to win. He remembers watching the 2011 Vanier Cup when Mac beat Laval. He was being heavily re- cruited by the Marauders at the time so he was paying close attention. He says he knows it can be done, though he quips it helped that the winners had Kyle Quinlan.
Fair enough, but Calgary has Mercer Timmis, right?
He pauses momentarily. “We’ve got a lot of great players.”
His other challenge is keeping his head in the present. Timmis has made no secret of the fact he wants to play pro. He desperately wants CFL scouts to notice him. All the honours he’s been hauling in might help, but he says he’s concentrating solely on the next two or three years.
It’s difficult at times, he admits. Whenever his mind wanders ahead, he brings himself back by telling himself he could lose his spot at any time. It’s a f ar-fetched notion, but it works for him.
“Right now all my focus is on CIS football and winning a Vanier Cup,” Timmis says.
Almost all. The day before that volleyball game between Mac and Calgary, he and some buddies had actually gone above and beyond to be truly effective hecklers. To the point that they’d done research on the Marauders players so their barbs would have extra bite.
“Trying to get in their heads,” he says. Then he laughs again. “They ended up winning anyway.”