Sports This Week - From football to bobsledding

Jay Dearborn has had a roller coaster introduction to the Canadian Football League as a member of the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

The former Carleton Raven was expected to be taken in the 2019 CFL draft, but the draft was held and his name was not called.

The safety later signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders but got hurt in training camp and was cut on the day the roster was finalized.

Dearborn said he went back to Ottawa to attend classes at Carleton, of course being disgruntled about being cut.

“I moped around for about a week,” he said in a recent telephone chat, adding he was working on overcoming his injury when a therapist said he could put Dearborn in contact with someone scouting for talent for Canada’s bobsled program.

Dearborn admitted he had never thought about bobsledding.

“Not at all. I’d never really considered it at all,” he said, but added he was off the ‘Rider roster at the time, and his university sport days were behind him so he said yes.

“I didn’t want to stop competing,” he said, so why not in a new sport?

So Dearborn attended a dryland training session in Ottawa and enjoyed the experience.

Then, a few weeks into the CFL season, Dearborn was brought back to Saskatchewan and on July 20, 2019, made his CFL debut.

Dearborn said after spending 2019 very much just learning the ropes in the CFL he had been looking forward to returning to Regina this summer.

“I was really excited,” said Dearborn adding the loss to Winnipeg in 2019 was not easy to take, but that looking past the loss to a new start in 2020 was a possibility.

“I spent the whole season learning so much ... absorbing what I could ... learning what the CFL was all about.”

But the 2020 season just never happened.

“Guys all over the league were sitting around all summer wondering if we’d have a season, or not ... It was a long summer of waiting to hear something,” said Dearborn, adding “It was disappointing when it was finally cancelled ...

“But, it was so far out of our control as players. The pandemic was bigger than the players, or as a league.”

But bobsledding was not off the table for Dearborn.

He is now one of three bobsled hopefuls with a CFL connection. The others are Shaquille Murray-Lawrence a 27-year old is a running back for the Montreal Alouettes, and Kayden Johnson. Johnson hasn’t played a CFL game yet, but the running back and was a seventh round selection of the B.C. Lions in the 2020 draft.

In Dearborn’s case team Ontario came calling and he was on his way to Whistler for more training.

“I got to go down the hill for the first time,” he said.

While the initial run was with a sort of training sled, more stable than an Olympic rocket, and the run started at corner seven, it still had Dearborn as pilot hitting around 90 to 100 kilometres an hour. Being at the helm was a great way to experience the excitement and fun of the sport.

Dearborn was hooked.

It helps that many of the skills central to football are also critical for bobsledders.

“In bobsledding it’s so specific about what’s required, you have to be so fast, so explosive and super strong,” said Dearborn.

“And it takes a technical mind,” he added, noting there are scant seconds to make the right moves. “You have to be very aware of your body’s movements.”

Of course Dearborn and the other CFLers are not the first to pursue the deal sports. Jesse Lumsden played in the CFL for 2005-to-2010, and he was in the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics as a member of Pierre Lueders' bobsleigh team.

Dearborn said knowing Lumsden balanced the two sports making him confident it can be done.

“That he made both sports work was super reassuring,” said Dearborn, adding that the national body of bobsledding in Canada is “willing to work with CFL athletes to allow the two seasons to coincide,” helps too.

So now that Dearborn is delving into bobsledding which sport does he like most?
“I don’t think there is a preference,” he said. “They’re both so different.”

Dearborn said in the CFL it’s travelling Canada with 50 or 60 guys, where bobsledding could take you all over the world, but focused on a team of four.

“Both are very different ... It’s great that I can do both,” he said. “... They both offer exceptional life experiences... In my eyes bother are such exceptional opportunities I can’t pass either one up.”