Memory Lane: CFL stars’ favourite football memories

Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?

I’m sure you can think of your favourite football memory right now. Maybe it was tossing the ball with a family member after Thanksgiving dinner or that time you caught the game winning touchdown while playing high school football. Or maybe it was the moment your favourite team won the Grey Cup and you can remember exactly where you were and who you were with.

Well, for the stars in the CFL, it’s just as easy for them to remember their favourite memory playing their favourite sport.

Over the last few months, I’ve talked to players all across the league and asked them to tell me about the memory that holds a special place in their hearts and here’s what they said.

This is Odell Willis’ favourite football memory – winning the Grey Cup (CFL.ca)

Duron Carter
Saskatchewan Roughriders

My favourite football memory is definitely my first CFL touchdown. It was my first touchdown in four years. My first CFL touchdown as a rookie was my first touchdown in a while and that’s probably my most memorable experience. It was against Toronto and the cornerback was Pat Watkins. I remember it like it was yesterday!

Courtney Stephen
Hamilton Tiger-Cats

When I walked on at Northern Illinois and I earned my scholarship after a full year on the practice team. That red shirt season where I had no scholarship and then before the spring game my coach went up to the front of the room to address the team and tell everybody the announcements for the day before we were going to have our annual spring game and he just started off by saying, ‘today, Courtney Stephen I’m going to put you on scholarship.’ That was probably the most proud moment of my life. And the crazy thing was my family was there to see it too. It was big. I left Canada in a really good situation at Wilfrid Laurier. It was amazing and I had a tonne of friends there but I was in pursuit of something that I wanted to do as a young kid. Then to see it all pan out and just to know what I went through to get there and all the risks I took and the sacrifices I made.

Antoine Pruneau
Ottawa REDBLACKS

Winning the Grey Cup in 2016!

Henoc Muamba
Saskatchewan Roughriders

Man, there are so many. When I was in university, there was this one trip. I went to St. Francis Xavier, that’s in Eastern Canada in Nova Scotia and once a year we’d go play against a team in Quebec. We went as a team and we went to Concordia University. We took the bus and it was like a 16-hour bus ride. It was just hilarious, it was fun. First of all, I wasn’t supposed to make the trip but I had to fight through an injury throughout the week to be able to make it and I was glad I was able to make it. We just had a blast that trip. My parents came there, my grandmother came there and for the first time saw me play football. She lives in Ottawa but she came to Montreal to watch me play. I remember specifically, she looked at my dad and said, ‘where are we at?’ and my dad said, ‘it’s a football game!’ and she was like, ‘football!? I thought you were talking a football soccer!’ That was her first time seeing me play. That was one of my fondest memories at University.

In the CFL it has to be my very first year in 2011 when I played for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and we went to the Grey Cup and played against my older brother Cauchy who played for the BC Lions. That was amazing. It was just a big gathering of the family. I remember my brother and I made a split jersey for my parents. We had family from all over come to the game.

In the NFL it was playing a divisional playoff game against the Denver Broncos as a Colt in Indianapolis. The game was in Denver but it was the loudest I’ve ever been in a stadium. There was a lot of pressure, it came down to the wire.

Jerome Messam
Calgary Stampeders

Playing for Team Canada in 2005. Going to Jacksonville, Florida. We beat Team USA and I had like 300 yards and kick return in that game. It was awesome.

Lirim Hajrullahu
Toronto Argonauts

We had won the Yates Cup in 2010 on a last-second field goal. And my biggest joy was to see my teammates so happy after we made the field goal. Ever since, that has motivated me to be the best kicker I can be just so I can see the smiles on other people’s faces. I like to see people happy so that’s always something has as stuck with me when I made the field goal and we ended up winning the Yates Cup. Since then, the joy that those types of things bring to your team, it’s something you strive for everyday just to be able to do that again.

Bo Levi Mitchell
Calgary Stampeders

I’d have to say 2010, it was the semi-final or quarter-final game but it was the versus North Dakota State. We were down by eight, we had to get a touchdown and a two-point conversion to go into over time. So we’re down by eight, we’re on the 10 yard line. We had three fourth downs so we almost gave it up three different times in that drive with a minute and 10 seconds left. That was the moment that I felt like I grew up as a quarterback. I learned to slow everything down, finish it off, finish every throw, be very conscious of what I was doing with the football. This was my first snowy game so it was pretty intense. I completed three, fourth down passes, got in the end zone, completed the two-point conversion. We scored the first play of over time and they fumbled it and it propelled us going onto the National Championship game. Same thing there, we came back from 19-0 with six seconds left in the fourth quarter to come back and become National Champions. That was pretty special because there are a lot of teams in college so it’s very, very hard to get to that point so that was definitely one of my favourite memories.

Odell Willis
Edmonton Eskimos

The Grey Cup.

Adrian Tracy
Hamilton Tiger-Cats

My first interception. It was here against Saskatchewan at home versus (Darian) Durant, one of the best quarterbacks in the CFL and it was my first career interception. It was a great game for us and it was exciting. It was something I hadn’t done before and I was able to do it front of a home crowd.

Alex Singleton
Calgary Stampeders

It would either have to be when we beat the Griz (Montana Grizzlies) in Washington-Grizzly Stadium so Montana University when I was a sophomore in college. Or it would have to be playing with my brother and my dad as a coach when I was 10.

Shamawd Chambers
Edmonton Eskimos

I can’t say the Grey Cup because it kind of happened so fast but probably after the game and the week after Grey Cup was probably my favourite. Actually, right after the game, the celebration was probably my fondest memory other than the very first game I put my equipment on in grade six.

Anthony Coombs
Toronto Argonauts

My most fond football memory was when I scored five touchdowns at my first game at running back. I was about eight years old and that was when I fell in love with football.