At the end of practice, when the B.C. Lions special teams are on the field in the early afternoon, running back Andrew Harris works on his blocking. Later, when most of his teammates are in the locker room, in and out of the showers, Harris is in the gym, lifting weights.
A year ago, Harris was a second-string back, a kid from Winnipeg who had clawed his way to the position, rising to the Canadian Football League not from the ranks of university in the United States or even Canada but junior football in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.
By last September, Harris's improbable rise began to tilt higher. He established himself as the starter in the back field and in November scored the first touchdown of the Grey Cup, a 19-yard scamper, and was named best Canadian of the game.
Monday, as the Lions (3-2) visit the Toronto Argonauts (3-2), Harris ranks second in the league for rushing and receiving yards, 628 in five games, on pace for more than 2,000. Brandon Whitaker of the Montreal Alouettes has 653 yards rushing-receiving in six games.
After practice last week, on a break from the weights, the 25-year-old sits at a table in the afternoon sun at the Lions practice facility in the Vancouver suburbs. It is hard to believe he is just three years removed from junior football and the Lions practice roster.
"You set out to do these things, so I don't think any competitor would say that they're surprised by what they're doing, because you always dream about it, you envision, and obviously you always think you're good enough," said Harris.
The big-time emergence of Harris comes a season after another Canadian excelled at a position almost always reserved for Americans. The Edmonton Eskimos' hulking Jerome Messam, 6 foot 4 and 248 pounds, was the first Canadian running back to reach 1,000 yards in more than a decade, and is now trying to catch on with the Miami Dolphins. Messam won the CFL's outstanding Canadian award last year, a season that started with him winning the award for the month of July, just as Harris has this season.
But Messam did most of his work on the ground. Harris, at 5 foot 11 and 200 pounds, has delivered almost half of his yardage taking passes out of the back field. The balanced attack is the result of the unorthodox road Harris has run.
Born in Winnipeg to a single mother – he has never known his father – Harris first loved and excelled at hockey but turned to football at 15. His bigger interest was making trouble.
"I was definitely in the wrong crowd," Harris said. "A lot of my friends would be doing the wrong things. I needed to get out of Winnipeg."
He was supposed to go to Wilfrid Laurier University to play football but he was skipping a lot school and botched his Grade 12 marks. He ended up at a training camp for the Vancouver Island Raiders in Nanaimo, and it clicked. It was a new home and Harris found father figures in the team's owner, local business man Hadi Abassi, and his coach Matt Blokker.
Harris was 18 and worked full-time at Abassi's roof-truss manufacturing firm and Abassi loaned him money for a pair of steel-toed boots, cash Harris paid back with his first paycheque. He played football evenings and weekends. At 20, he became a father. The experiences, said Harris, "definitely turned me into a man."
While Harris played five seasons of junior through the end of 2009, by 2008 he had been invited to a Lions training camp, and made the team's practice roster in 2009. In junior all the while, he pulled off ridiculous feats, topped by a 410-yard game on the ground to win the Canadian championship in 2008.
Lions coach Wally Buono wasn't sure he saw a CFL running back in the young Canadian and tried him in different positions – wide receiver and slotback on offence, and even safety in the defensive secondary. Come 2010, Harris felt poised but he didn't make the backfield and spent his rookie year on special teams, returning punts and kicks – and blocking a punt, too.
"There's been so many moments when I've been frustrated," said Harris. "I don't think I ever really showed that I was frustrated. I just wanted to show that work ethic, and just keep working."
It's exactly what one of the CFL's best receivers remembers of the young man. Geroy Simon, a mentor to Harris, recalled a "wide-eyed kid" when Harris was coming up.
"He's just always been humble," Simon said. "You'd hear about him tearing up junior but he always just came in and worked his butt off. He didn't say much. He came in and worked."
And it is Harris's unusual football education that has made him the player he is today, adds Simon. Harris's experience on defence helps him read opponents better and his time as a receiver means he knows the offence as a whole more intimately than most. Quarterback Travis Lulay calls him "headsy."
"So when, you know, stuff goes bad, or I get forced out of the pocket, he's pretty good at finding a soft spot," Lulay said.
It will be a challenge for Harris to keep his pace, as other teams begin to key on him, but the Lions have an array of offensive weapons. More focus on Harris means less on the likes of Simon.
So as the season comes to the one-third mark, Harris has a shot of rushing for 1,000 yards as well as hitting the same mark receiving. Such a feat could put him in consideration not just for the outstanding Canadian award but also for outstanding player, an award not won by a Canadian since tight end Tony Gabriel in 1978.
Harris presents only a singular, short-term focus.
"Even with this player-of-the-month thing, it's already behind me. That was last month, that was July, I'm thinking ahead to Toronto," he said. "Whatever I did, how many yards I had, touchdowns, all that's behind me. The biggest thing for me now is to get a win in Toronto."
David Ebner