Gryphon Bobsledders

Orion Edwards was staying with an old friend when he received massive news that immediately determined his path. Edwards, a former standout Gryphon Football defensive back and 2017 Wildman Award winner, was sitting on the couch in Royce Metchie’s Calgary apartment when he found out he had made the Canadian Bobsleigh Development Team.

He looked up from his phone and happily told his Gryphon brother and old secondary partner that his “life had just changed.”

“I’m a national team athlete,” Edwards recalls saying to Metchie. “Royce responded, ‘Yeah, you are.’

“It was a surreal moment.”

The Newmarket, ON native compiled an incredible career at Guelph. A team leader blessed with great athletic gifts and a corresponding work ethic, he dreamed of making the Canadian Football League. Edwards was right on course until he tore his ACL at a practice for the 2018 East West Bowl meant to showcase the best players in U Sports. It resulted in a year away from the sport he loved, as well as a setback on his quest to play pro ball.

But the injury gave Edwards perspective. He’s thankful it ultimately made him both a better student and person, though the desire to compete at a high level didn’t leave him. So, in January of 2019, after working around elite performers as a campus missionary for Athletes in Action at the University of Washington, he had an epiphany – he would try make the Canadian bobsleigh team.

“My faith is very strong,” says Edwards. “I believe that pain has a purpose, to reveal things in your life, or transform you. You have to go through some things so you can get to the next level.”

Another Gryphon friend had a suggestion. Star running back and now Grey Cup champion Johnny Augustine told Edwards to check in with former Guelph coach Neil Lumsden to get some advice. Coach Lumsden’s son Jesse, a U Sports legend from his days running the ball at McMaster, competed in bobsleigh for Team Canada at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

“Coach Lumsden told me it would take a lot of work,” says Edwards. “He said he had seen me do it on the football field. And that I could transfer that to bobsleigh.”

Edwards isn’t the first Gryphon Football player to make the move from the gridiron to the top of the hill. Tim Randall and Dan Mayhew have done the same, proudly representing Canada on the international stage. Randall, a Sociology major and fullback for Guelph from 2005 to 2009, was watching those very same 2010 Olympics. Like Lumsden, he was also from Burlington, and therefore particularly interested in seeing the hometown guy.

“Watching Jesse compete in 2010 at the Olympics, I said to myself, ‘That’s something I can do,’” Randall recalls. “A lot of the skills and physical attributes are very similar.”

He researched it and learned that Bobsleigh Canada was holding an open ID camp at York University later that summer. The idea is to test physical attributes, much like a football Combine. Randall signed up and subsequently earned an invite to the National Development Camp. It all exploded from there. He packed up, drove to Calgary (admittedly with few expectations), and began an eight-year journey representing Canada on the hill. Just months later in the fall of 2010, he was in Park City, Utah competing on the development circuit as a brake man in the 2-person sled.

“It was a surreal moment because it wasn’t too long before that I was sitting on a couch watching the Olympics thinking I could do this,” says Randall. “Next thing you know, I’m driving out to Calgary and uprooting my whole life. Then I made the team and represented my country. It all happened so quickly.”

Just over three years after his Park City debut, Randall walked into a stadium of 70,000 people at the Opening Ceremonies of the Sochi Winter Olympics, with the Canadian flag his grandfather Bill had given him draped on his back.

It’s a well-known fact in the bobsleigh community that you don’t grow up with a big desire to compete in the sport. Just how many accessible facilities are there out there? Bobsleigh athletes come together from other arenas – track, football, hockey, etc. Explosive power in the lower half is a necessity and football players know exactly what it’s like to hit a blocking sled on the practice field. It’s hard work.

Mayhew, a Guelph Human Kinetics grad and running back on the 1996 Gryphon Football that won the Yates Cup, moved to Calgary in 1998 right around the time of Nagano Olympics.

“Canada won gold in the 2-man and it was pretty big news there,” says the Okotoks, AB resident, who is now a father of two, a football coach, an MBA student, and a manager at Cook Medical. “Later that summer, I decided to make a few calls. My first thought was to do a competitive sport to keep fit and stay active. After a few sessions in the 1998/99 season, I was invited to the Team Alberta testing camp. I had the best scores in each test and Team Canada’s head coach was there.

“A month later I was pushing a bobsleigh on the World Cup tour.”

But Mayhew is quick to point out it’s not all glamour. Weeks bleed into each other as you drive around Europe in a truck, lugging heavy sleds around in the snow, and then struggling to find time to hit the hotel weight room. It’s like Groundhog Day, he says, with weekend races happening before driving out to the next circuit stop on a Monday.

And physically, the rides can be brutal.

“I think back to my first year as a Gryphon being on the punt return team and getting rag- dolled by Chuck Assman,” Mayhew says with a laugh. “That’s similar to being in a bobsleigh crash.”

As Mayhew puts it, you “pray you make it right side up.” Randall and Edwards both concur that even a so-called “smooth ride” is no picnic.

“Being at the top of the hill, especially at Whistler where it’s really steep, you have to think about your cues and that you have to push as fast and as hard as you can,” says Edwards, who compares the

moments before a run to being jacked up at kickoff. “You feel the speed and the G-forces, and you know where you are on the track. It’s a lot of fun. You want to look up and see the time, what did we push, what’s our down time, our speed? You always want to break personal records. It’s a crazy adrenalin rush.”

Randall was anxious before his first real run. He had only pushed inside at the famous Calgary Ice House.

“It’s amazing to see in person,” he says. “TV does not do it justice. Watching some of the sleds go down the track made me a little nervous. I didn’t know what to expect.

“There’s nothing you can do to prepare yourself for it other than to actually do it. You get out of the sled at the bottom of the track and it literally feels like you’ve been in a washing machine, tumbling around. It’s rough. It’s a violent ride. Some of the corners, you’re doing five or six Gs. It’s folding your body in half. You have to get used to the fact that you’re going to be uncomfortable.”

Despite the dangers and physical toll, the sport has offered all these former Gryphons both opportunity and a new, welcoming culture. The common theme is that they have taken what they learned as student-athletes at the University of Guelph – the academic work, the long hours of practice, the elation of winning and agony of losses, and most importantly, the belief among teammates – and drawn on that physical and mental experience in their new role.

The fact that Team Canada’s bobsleigh athletes come from different sports helps them bond. Randall found it fun and positive from the outset. He always loved the idea of being part of a team and working towards a goal, which played a part in pursuing his current career as a firefighter in Oakville.

“You become very close because you’re doing everything with each other,” he says. “You’re on the same schedule and the surrounding area in Calgary is incredible. We would go fly fishing or camping. There are so many outdoor things you can do.”

Edwards will try and follow that example set by Gryphons like Mayhew and Randall. That feeling of representing Canada is unsurpassed. Mayhew considers himself fortunate to have competed on the World Cup circuit in both the 2-man and 4-man events, with a couple highlights including a podium finish in a 2-man Europa Cup race and a fifth-place at the World Bobsleigh Push Championships in Monaco.

“The experience of being around people from so many countries is amazing,” says Mayhew, who last raced at the 2003 World Championships. “You have camaraderie with your competition. And Europeans take it seriously. The fans are great and passionate. It’s wild being at an event in Germany with 20,000 people lining the track, a band playing, and food cooking.

“You knew it was big. You could feel it.”

Randall cherishes the fact that he was able to experience the sport on the biggest stage. In an Olympic year, each Canadian sled must qualify on their own based on points from an accumulation of circuit results. In 2014, Canada had three competitive 4-man sleds and for the first time in history, all of them

qualified. Randall had just finished a race in Germany when he and his teammates found out they were going to Sochi.

“I remember reflecting on the whole process, the events leading up to it, and being very appreciative,” he says.

Canada was ranked fourth in the world heading into the Sochi Games. Unfortunately, they didn’t make the podium. But it was an education for Randall, who is thankful to have experienced the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with some of his closest friends.

“It’s not always about the result,” says Randall, now two years removed from competing. “As an athlete, you only focus on the result but when you retire, you reflect back and it’s more about the process and who you do it with. That’s shaped me as a man. Those are the invaluable things.

“I have an appreciation for the process over the 10 years. That’s what I’ll remember the most, all the work that went into that one race. All the races, all the mental and physical prep you put in, all the sacrifices you make over four years and essentially as a brake man, it comes down to 20 seconds. The Olympic is four runs and as a brake man, each run is five seconds of pushing.

“It’s pretty incredible to think of.”

Edwards hopes to reach those heights. He’s put his career as an educational Assistant with the York Region District School Board on hold and moved to Calgary with his fiancé Samantha, ready for this new chapter.

Edwards knows there is togetherness among Canadian bobsleigh athletes but he also understands the competition is fierce. That’s ideal for a goal-oriented individual like the former Gryphon, who remembers going to testing camp and being around past Olympians like Ben Cockwell and Cynthia Appiah. They made it clear that ‘If you’re in this room, we’re chasing gold medals.’

“That will always be the goal, to win gold for Canada,” Edwards says. “To climb a mountain, there are many steps.”

Written By: David DiCenzo