When it was all done, the 60-18 thumping administered by the University of Manitoba Bisons putting a third straight 0-8 season in the books, a phalanx of about 100 friends and family cheered the Alberta Golden Bears to their locker room under the Foote Field stands.
There were hugs and palpable raw emotion. Smith Wright, six-feet-two and 220 pounds of fifth-year fullback, put a well-wisher in a bear hug and said, simply: “Thanks for coming,” as big, fat tears spilled down his cheeks.
It was a touching scene, coda to a season that was about as poignant as a train wreck for a football program gone wrong, but one head coach Chris Morris and others believe is on the right pathway, even if the results don’t yet reflect that.
Not that anyone connected with the Golden Bears program is sugar-coating anything. After all, this was a team that scored 23.5 points per game this year but gave up an eyepopping 52.3.
It’s also a program whose aggregate won-lost-tied record over the last 14 Canada West seasons is 38-71-1. Over that span, the Golden Bears have managed just two winning seasons, back-to-back 7-1 years in 2004 and ’05 under then-head coach Jerry Friesen.
So, first-year head coach Chris Morris is in the initial stages of trying to reverse a legacy of losing that is deeply embedded. And the Tom Wilkinson 1990s were no better.
“Everyone knows what we’re trying to do here. “We’re all on the uprise, eveyone knows what we’re aiming for and we have a lot of confidence moving forward.” — first-year receiver and return man Tylor Henry
That positive attitude is remarkable, considering that as the club’s final game unfolded, the Bears were in danger of eclipsing the Canada West record for most points given up in a single, eight-game season – 431 by Simon Fraser back in 2006.
In the end, the Bears avoided that ignominy. They finished with a total of 419 points yielded. Bad, but not record-breakingly bad.
To an infrequent visitor, the Bears looked competitive, for a while.
The Bisons took an early 7-0 lead, predictably for a Top 10 team nationwide, headed for the Canada West playoffs. But the Bears responded with a scoring drive of their own, which came to a shuddering halt when quarterback Ryan Schwartz was picked off in the Bisons end zone.
The Bisons made it 14-0 not long after that. But the Bears responded again, this time with first-year receiver and return man Tylor Henry running the kick-off back 106 yards, breaking a Golden Bears record (103 yards) that had stood since 1962.
The Bears, it became clear, have offensive skill, but lack finish. One Bears drive was sabotaged when a wide-open receiver dropped a pass at the Manitoba one-yard line. Twice, the Bears gambled on third and short in the score zone.
After one such failure, Manitoba’s Anthony Coombs raced 107 yards from scrimmage for the most spectacular Bisons TD of the evening. But the Bisons snapped off a lot of big plays that were helped by poor tackling by the Bears.
You stub your toe on offence and let your opponent take advantage by scoring a major often enough and . . .well, it adds up.
“That’s sort of been the case all year,” Morris said. “When you look at it, we’ve had four games this year where we were in a position to win it with a minute or so left in the game.
“We don’t win those games, right? We had a lead in one game, then the last couple, we’ve had a lot of guys down (injured), so it’s been very difficult.
“We have to learn to finish. That comes with age. But also, you have to have athletes that don’t have to be perfect every play, have enough guys around that are talented enough that it doesn’t have to be perfect across the board in order for you to have a successful play.”
The numbers Morris is focused on as he works to reverse the team’s fortunes are big ones, simple ones. He needs bigger, more talented players on the offensive and defensive lines.
“You saw the size of their lines compared to ours — it’s not rocket science,” said Morris, the longtime Eskimos offensive line bulwark. “When you’re outweighed by 40 or 50 pounds, it’s very difficult to compete against people, no matter big your heart is.
“Our guys gave us lots of effort and we’re proud of them. In order for us to be a competive program moving forward, we need to find bigger athletes. And we need to turn the guys we have into bigger, stronger athletes.
“We need some big bodies with some mean dispositions that just aren’t interested in this sort of thing (blowouts) happening.”
Morris, hired in January, long after the normal recruiting window has closed in Canadian college football, worked with the talent available in 2013. Next season, he not only pledges to make changes, he’s on track to doing precisely that.
“We did a good job last year of bringing in some talented, skill players,” Morris said. “I think we need to bring in some linemen.
“We need to find some guys and we need to be deep on our lines so if we get one or two injuries, like happened this year, it’s not a catastrophic event for us.”
The Golden Bears have signed five of the Alberta Under-18 team offensive linemen, for starters, among the 6 Team Alberta players the program has recruited.
So, help is on the way for next season and beyond. But that was little comfort to those playing this season, especially the graduating players. How did Morris, a contagiously positive person, keep his team on task, as the blowout losses piled up?
“As a coach, I find it very difficult to settle for, ‘Well, that’s OK.’ And I didn’t give them that this year. I said to them, ‘Everyone can call you young and call you talented, but you’re making mistakes.’
“As a coach, did I put too much pressure on them? I don’t think so. I think it’s just a young team that needs to be pushed. And the more you push, like anything else, if you put pressure on it, put pressure on it, put pressure on it, eventually, it will become something special.”
His players buy in and, winless season or not, are keen to start preparing for 2014. They can see things improving, even if it may be hard for those outside the program to see it yet.
“I think the thing that helped me out the most (this season), was being able to come in as a first-year (player) and be in the game for all the games,” said Henry, who caught eleven passes for 149 yards on Saturday. “To be able to just play every down, every snap, be in all the scenarios, whether I’m the go-to guy on the play, whether I’m a distraction, whether I’m picking or blocking, it doesn’t matter.
“Being able to do all those things in my first year, not sit back and watch was something that really helped me grow. I really feel like that will help me take a lot of strides moving forward.”
Henry said the team, young as it was this season, carried a lot of optimism into the first four weeks of the season, despite coming in on the heels of two straight 0-8 seasons in 2011 and ’12. Technically, two games in which UBC defaulted owing to an ineligible player were recorded as wins, but they sure weren’t victories on the field.
“I don’t think we had any drop off in play or felt that we couldn’t win any game we play until we suffered a tough loss in Calgary (76-21),” Henry said. “Things declined a little bit (after that game).
“But prior to that, all the guys were really positive.”
Is he looking forward to next season?
“Absolutely,” Henry said. “I’m very excited.
“That’s the one thing that I take most pride is the off-season (training). I’m not going to be outworked in any category, so I’m looking forward to working hard, personally, and with my quarterback and the offence.
“We’re looking forward to doing some damage next year, with however many months we’ve got to train.”
For that matter, so is Morris, with a full batch of recruits, with a full calendar year to upgrade the fitness programs for his players, on and on.
Morris regrets not having been able to give his 2013 team a more positive experience in the here and now, as opposed to a year or two or three from now. As much as he believes the talent is coming, that better days are, indeed, ahead, the current team always is the focus. This year, as they had in the recent past, the Golden Bears suffered.
“We went through all those games together, and we took a lot of lumps together,” Morris said. “It would have been nice to have put some things in place to give these kids (2013 team) a sense of success.”
Already, Morris is looking forward to two mini-camps the team has planned for the Commonwealth Stadium fieldhouse, to getting his players launched on their off-season weight training program, to track work he’ll have them do at the Butterdome.
“There’s tons of things that we have put in place already,” Morris said. “Our off-season calendar is done and it’s ready to roll out.
“Last year, when you arrive in January and there’s not an off-season program in place, it’s difficult to get it going. We have structures now. There’s tons of building blocks in place.
“There’s a good plan in place to build on. That doesn’t help the right now, though. But I’m very encouraged. I’ve been involved with building things before, I understand you can’t do it overnight.
“It always starts with structure, it always starts with work, it always starts with having a plan. I think we have all those things. Now, it’s just a matter of using those things to bring in better athletes who can come in and make the athletes we have better athletes.
“So that when we take the field next year, we’re 10, 15 20 per cent better than we were this year. Now we take that and we make a few more plays. The games that we’ve been really close in become games we can win.
“You win one or two or three games and you look toward building on that for the next year moving forward. The good thing is that so many of our starters are in their first year that we could have a real nice, positive trend for the next four or five years. If we create the right system around them, it is going to keep adding those positives.
“I think, eventually it will just tip to where we’re a very good team. It’s just going to take a little time.”
