Arden Zwelling
CFL.ca
It’s been some kind of year for that football team from humble Kingston, ON.
After beating the University of Calgary Dinos 33-31 to win the team’s first national championship in 17 years, the Queen’s Gaels saw defensive standout Shomari Williams selected first overall by the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the 2010 CFL Canadian Draft.
Not to mention the media storm surrounding quarterback Danny Brannagan who — after a dazzling season that saw him overtake second place all time in CIS passing — was trying to become the first Canadian quarterback to start in the CFL since 1996. He would eventually land on the Toronto Argonauts practice roster.
It was certainly a good year to be a Gael, but lost somewhere in the shuffle was defensive stalwart Chris Smith, a linebacker who was named defensive player of the game in the Vanier Cup after he made 4.5 tackles, a 15-yard sack, forced a fumble and recovered another one in the dying moments to seal the Gaels victory.
With all the hoopla around the team it was easy for Smith to slip into the background, where he has found a home with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers who selected him in the fourth round, 28th overall, of this year’s linebacker-heavy draft.
“Everything has moved so quickly for me — it’s really gone by in a flash,” Smith said. “Everything goes so fast that you don’t really realize what’s happened. I can’t believe we’ve already played six games now.”
It’s true — the Bombers are six games deep into their quest to return to the playoffs after missing out by two points in 2009. If Smith were still in the CIS he would be three quarters of the way through the regular season at this point, but in the CFL things take a little bit longer to develop.
Well, with the schedule at least. On the gridiron things move significantly faster.
“My welcome to the CFL moment was in the first game — I got out there and the speed of the game was just incredible. I said ‘wow, okay I need to step it up here,’” Smith said. “It’s not like I can’t keep up with it. It’s just that everything [in the CFL] is at full speed all the time.”
Like most non-import rookies, Smith has been seeing the majority of his action on special teams where he’s managed to contribute two tackles.
The Toronto native also added a tackle on defence in his first CFL game, playing at free safety of all places. But his reps on defence have been limited thus far.
Although just last year he was a clutch defender with the Gaels, playing every important snap, Smith has no problem with his diminished role in Winnipeg.
“I love special teams — I’ve really enjoyed it so far,” Smith said. “As much as you need to be thinking and know what you’re doing, at the same time you just get to run down the field and smack somebody. That’s a lot of fun.”
It’s that enthusiasm and Smith’s combination of size and speed that make him such a useful tool for Blue Bombers’ special teams coordinator Kyle Walters.
Walters said Smith has been working hard to improve his technique and that his attitude and effort both in games and on the practice field has not been going unnoticed.
“He’s been kind of thrown into the fire and he’s doing some good things and some bad things like all rookies,” Walters said. “The best thing about him is his size and his feet. He runs very well for a guy his size — he can really get down the field.”
Of course, Walters should know Smith well, having seen him up close in the CIS for the past four years while he was the head coach of the Guelph Gryphons. Walters said that even when Smith was still getting his feet wet in the CIS, he could tell that he was a player who had a chance to make it to the pros.
“Yeah he was always a big guy for [Queen’s],” Walters said of the six-foot-two, 224-pounder. “He really got himself noticed at the evaluation camp and through the film we studied last year we knew he was a guy we really wanted on our team.”
Smith and the Gaels Vanier Cup winning team lost just once in 2009 — an upset at the hands of Laurier in the final game of the regular season when Queen’s had already locked up its first round bye in the playoffs.
Much was said about Brannagan and the Gaels solid receiving corps but Smith and the defence ranked fifth in the nation during the regular season, allowing just 328.6 yards per game.
“A lot of it has to do with the systems that we run at Queen’s. They’re very similar to what they do in the pros,” Smith said. “The coaches and the program really help develop people as both physical players and cerebral players. We develop into almost pro players before we even get into the pros.”
That professional atmosphere — instituted top-down by Gaels head coach Pat Sheahan — was evident throughout the season as Queen’s performed like a well oiled machine throughout their run to the national championship, vanquishing Vanier Cup favourites Western and Laval on their way.
Smith had an outstanding post-season, making 22 tackles and recording two sacks in the Gaels’ four playoff games.
But the playoffs were far from a cakewalk — the team flirted with elimination throughout. The Gaels beat Western by just four points in the Yates Cup, Laval by three points in the Mitchell Bowl and Calgary by a mere safety to take the Vanier.
Smith, who still talks to almost all of his former teammates regularly, went through a lot with the battle-hardened group that he considers family.
“We put four years of our lives into that. It was special to be able to accomplish something that enormous and life changing with your family,” Smith said.
The Blue Bombers wouldn’t mind if Smith brought along some of that winning mojo from Kingston to rub off on his new teammates in Winnipeg. The Bombers are 2-4 going into their Friday night date with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and have lost their last two games by a touchdown or less.
“We’ve lost a couple close games that could have easily gone either way and we’ve fought hard right to the end in each one of our losses,” Smith said. “There are a lot of positives that we can pull from our losses and a lot of good things we’ve been doing every week. The wins are going to start coming for us.”
