Saskatchewan: Canadian QB hoping to crack club
Courtesy Regina Leader Post:
Teale Orban’s summer has turned out to be radically different than he planned.
Orban, a University of Regina Rams quarterback, was supposed to start a summer job May 1 as a youth services co-ordinator with Services Canada. Things changed April 30 when the Saskatchewan Roughriders selected the two-time nominee for the CIS’s Hec Crighton award 41st overall in the CFL draft. Orban quit the job before he even started.
“It was the first time I had actually looked for a summer job and I found a pretty sweet one,” said Orban, who is to join the Riders at Mosaic Stadium on Wednesday for rookie camp. “I was so pumped that I got it and it would be this year that it happened. I’m sure I could have done something else, but you only get so many chances and you have to utilize them. I can work wherever for the rest of my life.”
Orban hasn’t been relaxing and waiting for rookie camp. Former Rams Chris Getzlaf and Ryan Ackerman told Orban about the Riders’ pre-camp workouts and Orban has been training with some of players on the defending Grey Cup champions. The Riders’ main camp begins Sunday.
“I’ve been living the life of a pro athlete without the paycheque,” said Orban. “I’ve been pretty busy doing team runnings and workouts. I know it won’t be as busy as it will be soon but it has been football, football and football.”
Orban, 22, has met with the Riders coaches and started learning what it takes to become a CFL quarterback. That means studying hours of video and absorbing every tidbit of information the coaches pass his way.
“What Teale has to do is process information,” said Paul LaPolice, the Riders’ offensive co-ordinator. “In this system, the biggest thing the players have to do is process information quickly because everything is faster, especially for rookies. Teale was a standout in high school and college, but everything was a little bit slower because he was faster than most people. He could make mistakes and recover. It’s very difficult to do that here because everyone is faster.”
Leave a Reply