SASKATOON — The relief was audible in Kevin Glenn’s voice.
“Seventeen training camps are in the books,” the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ veteran quarterback said Wednesday after the CFL team held its final workout of its 2017 training camp at Saskatoon Minor Football Field. “I’m excited. Everybody is, I think.
“Once you get to training camp, those first couple of days, you’re really into it. Then, as you start playing against your defence and it’s the same guys day in and day out, it starts to lull you to sleep a little bit.
“You’ve still got to go through it, but when that day comes when it’s the last day, you see guys around the locker room dancing and shouting and all of that. (The last day) is a good thing.”
Glenn has been enduring the rigours of CFL training camps since he first arrived in Saskatchewan in 2001. Now, having just turned 38, he can look back on all 17 of them fondly.
OK, maybe not “fondly” …
“When I first got into the league, they were the true two-a-days where you practised, you left, you went to go eat, you got full, you got tired, (you) tried to take a nap and then you had to get right back up to come back out onto the field,” Glenn said.
“It was like, ‘Why are we doing it like this?’ It was something that was put into place early on before I was probably even thought of and guys continued to do it until that ‘power practice’ came about, where you’re doing two practices at one time and you take a little break in between.”
Glenn prefers the back-to-back practices, which is how Saskatchewan runs camp. He also likes the tempo established at camp by Roughriders head coach-GM Chris Jones, who employs the “double-barrel” system.
Offences face defences going in opposite directions on the field, with plays following each other in rapid-fire succession. The format produces more plays and more chances for player evaluation.
But camp also produces physical, mental and emotional scars for the players — and Glenn has seen plenty of those over the years.
Players leave their families and, in many cases, their home country in hopes of finding employment in an unfamiliar place. They have to learn new rules and, during meetings every night, they’re bombarded with new plays they must remember.
“You can’t prepare yourself for this type of thing; you have to come and you have to go through it,” said Glenn, a product of Detroit. “You’re learning so much over a short period of time. You’re putting a lot of plays in and you have to memorize, keep going over them, watching film, doing all that repetition stuff out on the field. That’s how you get good at it.
“There isn’t really a trick that I’ve learned in 17 years (to combat the mental drain of camp). If somebody knows it, please tell me.”
But Glenn has learned a few tricks to fight the physical woes.
He wears what he calls “my Cadillacs,” a pair of rubber-soled cleats that are easier on his feet than the cleats he wears in games. He also keeps flip-flops around to give his feet a break.
The pivot also has learned to use his status as a tenured veteran when it comes to recovering from minor aches and pains.
“Trumping the rookies on the massage board in the training room,” Glenn said with a smirk. “That’s not really a trick; it’s just a vet rule that goes on.
“If there’s a rookie’s name up there as far as a massage is concerned and a vet wants to get a massage, you erase his name and put your name up there.”
Huh. Who knew?
But while Glenn has figured out many ways to make training camp as tolerable as possible, there remains one thing that has him flummoxed.
“I still haven’t figured out being able to take a good nap,” he said. “Even though you have the time, you get in the room and you’re staring at the ceiling. You just can’t go to sleep.
“It’s like you’ve got all this time to go to sleep and you can’t go to sleep. I haven’t figured that out. I don’t know what it is.”
Now that training camp officially is over, the Roughriders will complete their pre-season schedule. Saskatchewan is to visit the B.C. Lions in Vancouver on Friday to wrap up its exhibition slate.
Glenn didn’t play in the Roughriders’ first pre-season game — Saturday’s 25-25 tie with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at Mosaic Stadium — so Friday’s contest will be his first and only in-game tune-up for the regular season. Saskatchewan opens the campaign June 22 in Montreal against the Alouettes.
“I’m eager (for Friday’s game),” Glenn said. “(On Saturday), after you feel that atmosphere of being out there and you’re all dressed up and then you don’t take a snap, you’re ready to take a snap.
“I’ll be very eager (Friday) to play as many snaps as they call on me to play to get ready for the regular season. It’s just another opportunity to go out on the field and get better.”
