Courtesy Regina Leader Post:

Speedy, rookie receiver Weston Dressler admits he has a lot to learn during the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ training camp, but he would be well-advised to ignore what was going on around him following the team’s workouts Wednesday at Mosaic Stadium.

“I have to be tough,” he said. “When you’re smaller than everyone out there, you have to be tough, otherwise you’re not going to make it.”

While Dressler was answering questions about his size, speed and toughness, veteran CFL lineman Mike Abou-Mechrek was sneaking around with a shaving-cream pie that he smushed into the face of unsuspecting lineman Glenn January, who was in the middle of a television interview. Defensive tackle Scott Schultz, like Dressler an alumnus of the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux football program, finished a radio interview and walked by the youngster with an affable taunt: “When you went to the Sioux, they spelled it S-U-E, like the girl.”

Dressler just laughed and kept right on going, as he does on the football field whenever he’s chasing a football, even if there’s a bigger defensive back in his path. And all the DBs are bigger than Dressler, who is listed generously by the Roughriders as being 5-foot-7 and 179 pounds.

“There are all kinds of guys who aren’t real big or tall, but they have speed,” said Roughriders offensive co-ordinator Paul LaPolice. “When guys talked to me about him coming to camp, I said, ‘I don’t mind if he’s small, as long as he can change direction.’ You have to be able to avoid people if you’re that small. He can change directions quickly.

“The thing that surprise me is he’s durable and he’s tough. Sometimes little, track guys can’t run every day, you bump them and they get knocked down. Not him. He’s a powerful kid.”

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