Wake never quit on football dream
His tale of ‘amazing journey’ to NFL will be told at Orange Helmet Awards
Nine years ago, Cameron Wake couldn’t envision anyone paying $275 a plate to hear him speak at an amateur football fundraising dinner.
He was still trying to imagine himself as a professional football player, never mind a motivator in the flourishing lecture circuit as a contemporary sports hero.
But when he bounds on to the stage tonight as the keynote speaker for the B.C. Lions’ annual Orange Helmet Awards, those in attendance at the Westin Bayshore will carefully consider whether they have the same attitude and drive that allowed an NFL castoff to ascend to the heights of a four-time Pro Bowler.
“It would have been hard to wrap my head around that idea back then,” Wake admitted Wednesday, before boarding a flight for Vancouver. “It’s truly been an amazing journey to take me where I am today.”
Before his Vancouver audience, the face of the Miami Dolphins will recall one of the worst days in his professional life, when his timing, not his technique, was regarded as inherently flawed.
In the spring of 2007, the undrafted Nittany Lion from Penn State — cut by the New York Giants, unsigned by the Baltimore Ravens after a mini-camp — was contemplating a long career as a mortgage broker, not a gridiron star.
At 25, he was starting to believe his dream wasn’t going to happen. Yet cleats in hand, Wake decided to give it one last shot in the Canadian Football League, showing up early for a Lions free-agent camp at Howard University in Virginia.
As the appointed hour got closer, Cam and his father, Alvin, started to get a sinking feeling. Where were the other free agents? So they made a call. “Everybody’s here,” said a voice on the other end of the line. “Here” was Hampton University, another historically black college in Virginia, but three hours’ drive south of Howard.
“It was a crazy set of emotions that day,” Wake said Wednesday.
“I went from being like a kid on Christmas morning to complete devastation.”
Fortunately, for Derek Cameron Wake, the Lions already had seen enough on videotape to give him an invitation to training camp.
If his instincts were wrong, Lions boss Wally Buono figured it would only cost the team the price of an airline ticket.
Slotted fourth on the depth chart at defensive end on opening day of his first Lions training camp, it was the last time Cam Wake was to be sold short on a football field.
He had three sacks in his first CFL game and 39 in his first two seasons in which he was named the league’s defensive player of the year both times. The NFL was paying attention. Among a score of suitors, the Rams, Saints, Bills, Vikings and Dolphins pursued him with the most vigour. He eventually signed with Miami.
Seven seasons later, Wake has played 100 games, recorded 70 sacks, makes a solid $8.4 million per annum and was named one of the Dolphins’ all-time 50 best players.
“If you said, nine or 10 years ago, there’s an NFL franchise that’s going to name you one of the best 50 to ever play for them, I would have asked, ‘What have you been smoking?’ ” Wake said with a chuckle.
“I’ve won a lot of awards, but that’s truly the greatest so far. And my career’s not done yet.”
When Wake’s football career is through — he turned 34 on Jan. 30, and is coming off a seasonending Achilles rupture — his father believes he could morph into a full-time motivational speaker, his improbable comeback, welldocumented work ethic and never-give-up attitude serving as grist for a compelling personal message.
“In his bedroom, Cam had a motto on his wall: ‘ Dream it, See it, Be it, then you can Do it,’ ” Alvin Wake says.
“He is an example of what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it.” END ZONE: The Lions announced on Wednesday the signing of free-
agent defensive tackle Bryant
Turner Jr., a five-year veteran with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and the filing of retirement papers by former NFL receiver Austin
Collie, who had seven touchdown catches in his only season in the CFL.