Courtesy Regina Leader Post:

REGINA - The Saskatchewan Roughriders may soon find out what the market will bare.

The resurgent Riders are preparing for today’s CFL West Division semifinal against the Calgary Stampeders which will be Saskatchewan’s first home playoff game since 1988 - when Scott Schultz was 10 years old.

Schultz was asked what kind of atmosphere he envisions.

“It’ll be pretty good,” Schultz said Saturday. “I’m sure you’ll see some guys hanging from the rafters. I think the security is beefed up.

“I don’t know if we’ll get any streakers tomorrow. We’ll see what happens. Dare to dream.”

The Roughriders wanted to be streaking as the playoffs loomed and, sure enough, that was the case.

Yes, there was the matter of a 41-13 loss to the visiting Toronto Argonauts in the regular-season finale. But the result of that game, while it enabled Toronto to secure first place in the East Division, did not influence the Roughriders’ playoff fortunes.

Of greater significance was the Roughriders’ five previous games - all victories. That roll allowed Saskatchewan to finish second in the West and play host to a post-season game for the first time since the Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney administrations.

Back then, Schultz was a roly-poly elementary-school student in Moose Jaw. He followed the Roughriders, as is mandatory for all Saskatchewanians, but not intensely.

That changed when Saskatchewan won its most-recent CFL championship - only the second title in franchise history.

“I jumped on the Rider train after the 1989 Grey Cup,” Schultz said.

Why not before the 1989 Grey Cup? OK, so his timing wasn’t the best …

“Sweet, huh?” Schultz said. “Always advantageous, looking for the opening.

“I was just a fat little kid playing with my Transformers and G.I. Joes and I was kind of aloof through the whole thing until it kind of dawned on me about the greatness and what a Grey Cup means. To see the adults around me and how they reacted, that was kind of the inspiration to get involved with this team.”

During the developmental years of Schultz’s interest in the CFL, Kent Austin was routinely amassing eye-popping passing totals on behalf of the Roughriders. Austin’s coming-out party was the 1989 Grey Cup, in which he threw for 474 yards and three touchdowns to help Saskatchewan defeat the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 43-40.

Austin is now the Roughriders’ head coach - and a leading candidate for CFL coach-of-the-year laurels.

“He definitely was a role model - a guy we looked up to as kids,” Schultz recalled. “It was an ‘I want to be Kent Austin’ type of thing, right?

“He’s just so staunch in his beliefs and in his way of thinking,” said Schultz, a seventh-year Roughrider. “Any time that the media types have tried to report the sexy story about injuries or ‘This is happening!’ or ‘What about penalties and the reffing?’ he has really done a good job of instilling in us that it’s a non-football issue.

“We’ve kept everything at such a periphery. I think you can see the consistency, and the 12 wins have showed that we’ve been able to do that. That’s largely because of his attitude.”

Schultz was then asked how Austin’s attitude compares to that of the previous regime, led by head coach Danny Barrett and general manager Roy Shivers.

“All I can say about that is we had a lot of the same players for a lot of the same years,” Schultz said. “We’ve had good teams. We’ve always made a good push. We’ve been to three Western finals.

“I really believe that it was just a matter of a fresh set of eyes looking at the situation and taking it in a new direction. That’s all you can really say and it has worked out really well.”

So well, in fact, that Saskatchewan is poised for its first home playoff game in a generation. The anticipation is such that all 28,800 tickets for the West semifinal were quickly devoured.

Schultz will be like a kid on Christmas Eve - this time without the Transformers or G.I. Joes - while anxiously awaiting the kickoff.

“It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be one of those things where I’m going to have to ask my wife to do me a favour and keep her and our little baby away so I can kind of be a hermit down in the basement and just go through my thoughts and collect myself because it’s a pretty big deal tomorrow.”