Bad guys wear black. And Cochrane High School Cobras 2015 grad Aidan Smith is fine with that.
Wearing the black practice jersey of the University of Calgary Dinos football team’s defence, Smith is banging heads at the next level.
A two-way lineman in high school, he now has one direction to go. Right at the quarterback.
From his nose-tackle position it won’t be easy, as he’ll occupy two offensive linemen on most plays.
But that won’t stop his motor from running. One of the most prepared, hard-working Cobras seniors last season, Smith does not look out of place in his first season on a Canada West Universities Athletic Association (CWUAA) field.
He’s right at home in the trenches, locking up with red-jersey-clad offensive linemen during drills at a three-hour Dinos practice Aug. 31 on the FieldTurf surface at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium.
“It’s awesome. I’m learning a lot. It gives me an idea of what I have to work on for the year,” the 6-foot, 260-pound lineman says following Dinos practice. “What my strengths are, what my weaknesses are. Coming here exposes that. It just gives you more incentive to work really hard.”
A two-way lineman for the 2014 Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association Tier 3 provincial high school football champion Cobras, Smith now must focus on defence.
“I am very comfortable,” he says of being assigned the nose-tackle position. “At Cochrane High, I did play both ways. So I am used to playing on that side of the ball. It’s going to be really exciting, for sure.”
And there is no shortage of hard work, and heavy lifting, on the defensive line. Yet, as he’s discovering, there’s more to his position than brute strength.
“The thing is, a lot of high-school players – I fell victim to this – all they think about is getting big,” Smith relates. “All they think about is I have to get bigger and bigger. Most don’t take into account that speed, agility, hands are just as important, if not more important.”
It’s this kind of discovery that makes Smith, and his fellow Dinos rookies, a good fit with U of C football.
“So, again, it’s keeping that tradition alive with a strong program and identifying the young athletes who will be able to step in, in one or two years down the road and contribute,” says Dinos head coach Wayne Harris. “It’s very important to me that we get local athletes. The best athletes from Calgary and southern Alberta and the Calgary area. That’s been the foundation of our program. These are the young guys we look to develop this year.”
Just four weeks into his introduction to CWUAA-level football, Smith already has stashed some nuggets of wisdom to share with aspiring university football players:
“Just give it all you’ve got,” he says. “My advice is to enjoy Grade 12 because it goes like that (snaps fingers). Just enjoy every single thing. For the young guys, becoming a young guy myself again coming into university, my advice to them would be just do as much as you can to impress the coaches.”
