Running away from trouble

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This article was published 27/08/2015 (3875 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Blue Bombers kick returner Troy Stoudermire knows a thing or two about taking the ball and running with it.

In college, as a member of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, he set an NCAA Division I record for kickoff-return yards with 3,615. In 2014, his first season with the Blue and Gold, he finished the year tied for first in the CFL in punt-return-yards average and fifth on kick returns.

For Stoudermire, like many great returners, it’s his ability to make the right decision at the right moment that has earned him recognition. It’s something he’s benefited from both on the field and in life.

Growing up in Pleasant Grove, Texas, a town just a 15-minute drive southeast of Dallas and one of the most dangerous areas in the state, Stoudermire lived in a place plagued with crime, drugs and gangs. He knew the wrong choice could very well end up being his last. Instead of picking up a gun, he reached for a football.

“I don’t even want to think about it,” he said, fresh from practice at Investors Group Field Wednesday afternoon, when asked to ponder what could have been. “I don’t know because I never had a chance to think about it, but I saw some of my friends fall off; go to jail, get killed.

“I had a really good group of friends, we all played football and we were all the same way. We were all from the same neighbourhood but we all wanted to make it in something and being around those guys, I think that’s how I stayed out of a lot of trouble from the streets.”

To stay on track, Stoudermire immersed himself with sports, any sport. When one season finished, it was on to the next.

“My mom kept me so busy,” he recalled. “I even played hockey when I was little, just to keep my head out of the streets.”

Even though he got to test out a few different options, it was always football that won the day. Texas is a football-crazy state, after all, and Stoudermire soon saw the game as his ticket out — the chance for a different ending.

At the age of three, he remembers watching his older brother, Nick, who at the time dominated the Pop Warner Football League.

“I just used to watch him,” he said. “I wanted to be just like him, to have that aggression and that killer instinct inside of me. Ever since then, I always wanted to be the best.”

Two years later, Stoudermire was on the field, learning the ins and outs of the game from coaches who were just as devoted to developing his skills on the field as they were to nurturing him off it.

“I’ve had the hardest coaches growing up, from Pop Warner, to high school to college,” he said. “They’ve been pounding me and pounding me about being great, about being a team player and to listen to the coach all the time.”

By high school, Stoudermire had developed into one of the brightest young players in Texas. But it was one game in particular, while playing quarterback for Seagoville High School, that his dream of playing professional football started to feel like a real possibility.

The game involved a 90-minute drive to a rival school and ended in a 55-45 victory. Stoudermire scored all seven touchdowns for his side. The very next day, the phone rang. It was Texas Tech. They offered him a spot on their team.

‘Crazy’

‘My mom kept me so busy… I even played hockey when I was little, just to keep my head out of the streets’

— Troy Stoudermire

“It was crazy,” said Stoudermire. “I was 16 and I was all over the newspaper in Dallas. That’s when everybody figured out who I was and it started rolling from there.”

Rolling, indeed. His next game, he scored six touchdowns. The following year he transferred to Skyline, one of the best high schools in Dallas. The school is known for producing elite athletes such as Olympian Michael Johnson and Larry Johnson, the NBA’s No.1 overall pick in 1991. He was treated like a star, playing in front of crowds bigger than what he sees today in the CFL.

It’s at Skyline where other college offers started to stream in. With a list of potential suitors, it looked as if his next stop would be the University of California. That is, until he and three friends from Skyline took in a trip to Minnesota to check out a game at the Metrodome, along with 75,000 screaming fans.

“They all started chanting our names,” said Stoudermire, a feeling that still makes him smile today. “They were chanting “Skyline 4,” and ever since then I was like, ‘We got to go to Minnesota,’ and we all committed.”

It was at the University of Minnesota where Stoudermire’s return game began to hit stride. Known for his speed, his coaches gave him a shot. Wanting desperately to play in his freshman year, he made good on his first return, almost taking it back for a score.

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“I returned it for, like, 60 yards and ever since then the coach just left me back there and I started busting all of them,” he said.

Now in his second season with the Bombers, Stoudermire has struggled to replicate his numbers from last year. He missed the first three games with a broken bone in his right hand. In his return in Week 4, he fumbled a return that helped the Calgary Stampeders erase a 16-0 Bombers lead, and eventually win the game.

But despite his struggles this year, the 25-year-old takes solace in knowing what he’s been through and knows the past is in the past, and it’s the future he and his teammates are focused on now.

“We’re ready to move forward,” he said. “We’ve gone over what we did before the bye week and now it’s time to move on and face Calgary again and we’re ready to go dominate.”

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @jeffkhamilton

Jeff Hamilton
Multimedia producer

Jeff Hamilton is a sports and investigative reporter. Jeff joined the Free Press newsroom in April 2015, and has been covering the local sports scene since graduating from Carleton University’s journalism program in 2012. Read more about Jeff.

Every piece of reporting Jeff produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.