Courtesy Vancouver Province:

No, coach Wally Buono said with a trace of a smile, it wasn’t how the Lions normally collect background data on their first-round pick in the CFL draft.

It is not standard procedure for the club president, Bob Ackles, to conscript his grandson in order to get the goods on Justin Sorensen.

Nor do they normally get the player’s mother to collect scouting game tapes from his work at the University of South Carolina.

But it is the CFL, after all, and when there’s a 6-foot-7, 327-pound offensive lineman available who once played high school football for the aptly-named Ballenas Whalers in Parksville, you do what it takes.

So to start a draft Wednesday that was akin to playing the futures market, the Lions reached out, and up, when it was time to make their fifth overall pick.

NCAA rules prohibit CFL teams from even making contact with redshirt juniors with remaining college eligibility. So Ackles went to work.

Godson Kyle Ackles was Sorensen’s high school teammate, and that led the team to Sorensen’s mother, Melanie Saxby.

Two weeks ago the Lions had not watched an inch of tape on the 21-year-old, who is projected to move from guard to tackle for his senior season. Now he could eventually wind up with the Lions, providing the NFL doesn’t draft him next year.

“I’ve never even played in a three-down game,” Sorensen said from Columbia, S.C. “But if they want me to move and it all works, I’ll happily move.”

Making adjustments to achieve a goal has been part of Sorensen’s makeup almost since birth.

“He’s just got that focus,” Ballenas coach Shaun Hines said of Sorensen, an early business graduate and academic all-American.

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