BIG- LEAGUE DREAMS
With hockey too expensive, Harris rushed to football. »
Growing up in Winnipeg, raised by a single mom, Andrew Harris did not have the more conventional upbringing of many of his friends. But his dream was the same as many other Prairie kids dreaming of a future on Canada’s great frozen stage. He wanted to play in the National Hockey League. “My icons were Steve Yzerman and Paul Kariya,” said Harris, the running back of the Lions, aware of the odd juxtaposition of talking hockey in the week leading to Sunday’s West Division Final against the Calgary Stampeders at BC Place Stadium. “I was fast. I used to win the fastest skating competitions when I got older.
“I could score goals and I liked to stick my nose in there. I would lead my team in points and penalty minutes. I guess I’m still sticking my nose in there today, but in a different way.”
Harris’s mom, Carlene Boivin, remembers Andrew’s first year in organized hockey, playing for the Riverview Rangers as a nine- year- old. She was astounded to see him score “130 goals” in his first season, having little idea her son could be so good in his first year against others who had a two- or threeyear head start. He could swoop and dart after pucks, deliver checks and hit the top corners with his shot. The lightning quickness he shows today on the football field manifested itself first on the ice rink.
“Andrew always excelled at any sport he attempted,” she said. “I don’t think I ever saw him lose a draw ( faceoffs). When he got older, teams from the Western Hockey League and the Manitoba Junior League started to show some interest.”
But times were not easy. Carlene, who works today as a social worker assisting intellectually challenged adults to enter the workplace, sometimes needed two jobs to make ends meet for herself and her only child.
The dropout rate for many elite players in minor hockey begins when the demands to stay on the treadmill, as others fall behind and spin off, becomes too much.
For Harris, it was much more basic than that.
“The fees, the equipment, the travel expenses, I don’t know how a lot of families today can afford it,” Harris said. “I played at a time when composite sticks were just coming out. They were about $ 100. I played with a wooden stick because I would go through one every week. When I looked around, I was the only one on the team who had one. I used to wear this old bubblehead helmet, something from the ’ 80s.
“I got teased about it, but I took it. That’s part of the rite in growing up. But it just got too expensive for us. I still think about what might have happened if I stuck with it. Some of the kids I played with are in the NHL or the AHL. But I don’t go around with a lot of regret. I found football and I love the game.”
A childhood friend and hockey rival of Harris, Ryan Reaves, who went on to be drafted by the St. Louis Blues, is the son of Willard Reaves, a former running back for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and the CFL’s most outstanding player in 1984.
Carlene believes Andrew was every bit the equal of Ryan as a hockey player. But it’s more Willard, an all- American at Northern Arizona before coming to Canada, that he’s become.
“Andrew is a naturally humble, unselfish person,” Carlene said.
“I tired to instil values in Andrew that he was part of a larger whole, and that he should give something back to the community.”
“I think that’s why he loves football so much. It’s the ultimate team sport. Everybody on the team has a job and a purpose. And it takes everybody pulling together to be successful. No man can do it alone,” Carlene said.
Aware of socio- economic differences and the pay- for- play mentality of minor sports, Harris’s favourite charity is the Boys and Girls Club, which provides social, education and athletic opportunities for kids. In partnership with Lions teammate Angus Reid, who runs a silkscreening business, he is selling caricature “Andrew Harris No. 33” T- shirts for $ 25. Proceeds go to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Vancouver.
Harris, 25, admits he never had a strong father figure in his life, until he went to the junior Vancouver Island Raiders of the B. C. Football Conference as a 17- year- old. Nanaimo businessman Hadi Abassi, who owns the team, became his surrogate dad. Matthew ( Snoop) Blokker, the team’s coach, was like an uncle. Hamead ( Hammer) Rashead, the general manager, now a Vancouver real estate agent, looked after him like a big brother.
“When your child leaves home at a young age, you want to make sure he’s in good hands,” Carlene said. “Those men treated him like family. It probably was the first time in his life Andrew felt he was part of a family.”
Harris has never met his natural father, though he is at a stage of life when he is exploring his roots and seeking to connect. He believes the man lives today in the Vancouver area.
“He was a cricket player from Barbados, and a pretty good one, I’m told,” Harris said. “I think he was on their national team ( cricket is the passion of Barbados). I don’t know anything about cricket. I don’t know anything about the rules. I don’t know if he knows I even exist. It’s tough. It’s not something I like to talk about too much. But I would like to meet him, if that day ever comes. I guess I come from an interesting gene pool.”
On his mother’s side, Carlene’s uncle is the late Don Ross, an end who played for the Lions from 1955- 57, in the early years of Empire Stadium, the team’s original home. He later got into politics and was mayor of Surrey from 1980- 88, the municipality that is home to the Lions’ training facility.
“A cricket player on one side, and a football player on the other,” Harris said. “I guess that’s helped me get to where I am today.”
As a junior, Harris was what football people call a “freak” runner, who confounded coaches trying to draw up schemes to stop him. He either simply outran defenders, or left them clutching air, because his style followed no predictable pattern.
As he did when he was a nineyearold hockey player, Harris scored in electrifying style for the Raiders. He won the Wally Buono Award as the top junior in the country, and played with
From the moment I first shook Andrew’s hand, you could tell there was something special about him … Andrew knew what he wanted in life and he went right after it.
HADI ABASSI VANCOUVER ISLAND RAIDERS OWNER
great, passionate bursts of energy, as he does today.
“From the moment I first shook Andrew’s hand, you could tell there was something special about him,” Abassi said. “He was very mature and very driven. Andrew knew what he wanted in life and he went right after it. You don’t meet many people like him, in any walk of life. You couldn’t help but be impressed by the way he stuck to his regimen, careful with his diet, putting in the hours in the gym. He is a wonderful player. More than that, he’s a wonderful young man.”
This season, his third in the CFL, Harris became the first Canadian to lead the league in yards from scrimmage ( a combination of rushing and receiving yards) in 45 years. He is one of only two homegrown players to do it. The last was Terry Evanshen, in 1967, the year Evanshen won the first of two Canadian player of the year awards. He was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1984.
Harris, unlike Evanshen, won’t be the most outstanding Canadian player in the CFL this year. That honour probably will go to the Stampeders’ Jon Cornish, who became the first homebrew to lead the league in rushing since 1988.
Comparisons between Cornish and Harris can be odious but they’re inevitable.
Middle linebacker Adam Bighill is anything but impartial on the subject, since he’s Harris’s teammate. But Bighill practises against Harris on a weekly basis, so he has an appreciation for how difficult it is to mark him.
“Cornish or Harris? I’d take Harris,” Bighill said. “He’s a better all- around player. Jon comes at you hard and he has a good burst. But Andrew can beat you in a lot of different ways. Fades, screens, wheel routes. He can beat you as a receiver. And, whoosh, he can beat you as a runner. He’s so elusive. And people underestimate his power. He’s not particularly big ( 5- 11, 195), but he’s solid when he hits you, and his legs never stop moving. It takes a lot, sometimes a lot of guys, to bring him down.”
Being a full- time player doesn’t allow Harris to be a fulltime father, one of the regrets of the football life.
When he was 20, he fathered a child — a daughter, Hazel — who refers to him as “daddy” and watches his streaking image on television back home in Winnipeg, with her mother. Although Harris is no longer involved in a relationship with his former girlfriend, he maintains close ties to the woman and her family. He has purchased a condo in Winnipeg to be near his daughter, and takes every opportunity he can to be involved in her upbringing.
“Being his mom, and Hazel’s ‘ grandma,’ ” I’m a little biased,” Carlene said. “But Andrew adores Hazel. They have a special bond that is magical. He wants to be with her any time he can.”
“Now that she’s older ( four) there’s such a bigger bond between us,” Harris said. “We spend a lot of time every week talking on the phone. It’s tough being away from her, but football is the life I’ve chosen. I want to get back to Hazel as soon as the season is over.”
That which reveals his humanity and his character is a side of Harris that is shielded from public view.
On Sunday, the public side of Andrew Harris plays for the Lions and more than 40,000 of their fans, with a berth in the Grey Cup at stake.
But privately, he feels extra pressure to perform well, for a little girl watching in Winnipeg, waving an orange- andblack pompom, and rooting for daddy to bring it all home.