Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Welcome to my newly re-vamped website. It has been a long off-season and I haven’t updated my site in a while, so there is a lot I have to cover.

During the off-season I was fortunate enough to be involved with the Alouettes “School is Cool” tour from January to April. The visits entail going to elementary schools and talking to the kids about important life lessons, such as reading, writing, the importance of school, teamwork, etc. I had a great time, learned a lot, and got some positive feedback from the kids.

On March 8th and 9th, myself along with 7 other professional offensive linemen coached in the inaugural Oline.ca Offensive Line Skills Clinic. I founded and started www.oline.ca, so it was great to put on the clinic and have all the hard work pay off with a successful clinic. We all had a blast, and hopefully the clinic will be an annual event for years to come.

Throughout April and May I mainly focused on my training, except for the week of April 23-28. I was involved with a great football camp called the Elite Football Camp, www.elitefootball.org. It is a 5 day camp that mimic's a CFL training camp. The kids had a great time and got to experience a snippet of what we deal with on a yearly basis. The camp culminated with a scrimmage in which I was offensive coordinator, and my team won (needless to say I am quite proud!).

Training camp started on June 1st, and was probably the toughest of my 10 year career. Not just because I am a year older, but our new head coach, Marc Trestman, has great attention to detail and commands hard work. So far it has payed off, and we all expect it to throughout the year. New offense, new defense, new coaches and new beginning for a lot of players. The best is yet to come.