The next important step towards the Stampeders’ 2009 season will be made this weekend in Winter Springs, Fla.

“On Saturday, we’ll have an open free-agent tryout,” said Stampeders senior vice-president of football operations and director of player personnel Jim Barker. “That’s all players who we haven’t seen. We hold a few spots in our mini-camp for players who will come to that workout.

“Those players will run for us, those players will jump for us and then we’ll put them through drills. Our entire staff is there, so it’s a really unique opportunity for the athlete because it’s rare that a coaching staff actually evaluates you. It’s usually a scout or a personnel guy who does it but with us, it’s our entire coaching staff. You can’t ask for more as an athlete. It’s a great opportunity.”

The open-tryout portion of the weekend draws a varied cast of characters who pony up $80 apiece for the chance to work out for professional coaches.

“It’s quite a range,” said Barker. “One of the reasons you charge for it is to keep out the guys from off the barstool. We don’t charge as much as most or try to make a ton of money on it, but you filter out some people by at least charging something. We use that to defray the cost of having our entire staff down there. It’s not a money-grab at all.

“You occasionally are going to get that 42-year-old guy who thinks he can play or a woman who thinks she can play. Then they’ll come out and we coach them up, just like everybody else. Everybody gets the same opportunity. The one thing is that at the end of the day, we’ve never had anyone come up and say, ‘That was garbage, we didn’t get an opportunity.’ We always will give them an opportunity. When all is said and done, we know which players have a chance to come and compete. I think we do as good a job as anybody at these free-agent camps in terms of giving people an opportunity to show what they can do. And that’s the whole key.”

Occasionally, a real Cinderella story emerges from the tryouts.

“Nealon Greene,” said Barker. “Back when I was in Toronto, John Jenkins and I were doing a camp down in Texas and we signed him out of that and he went on to be a starting quarterback in this league. He just kind of fell to us.

“It’s normally guys who come from smaller colleges (who attend the open tryouts). There will be maybe five to 10 guys who played in this league before or played in the NFL and they’re now looking for a break and trying to get someone to see them. So much of the whole football business is timing and being in the right place at the right time. If you have a coach there and you happen to have a great day and there’s something there that excites that coach, then you have a chance to move forward in the process.”

Impressing the coaching staff is only the first hurdle.

“We’ll then take the very best of that tryout group to our mini-camp the next day,” explained Barker. “We’ll take the two days of the mini-camp and evaluate players that we’ve identified at this point as having a chance to come to training camp. From that, we’ll sign people that we’re going to bring to main camp.

“So we basically will fill our roster from this weekend, whether it comes the free-agent camp or the mini-camp. That’s where we will fill our roster to come and compete at training camp. We’re real excited about the quality of players we have coming into this.”

Charleston Hughes, Brandon Smith, Saleem Rasheed, Milton Collins, Demetris Summers and Reggie Williams were just some of the players who came out of the Florida mini-camp a year ago to make the Stampeders roster. Dwight Ellick, a cornerback out of Notre Dame, emerged from open tryouts and made it all the way to the Stamps’ main camp.

“It is a long process,” said Barker. “We worked some guys out in Dallas last week. Like I told those guys, this is the first step, then the mini-camp and then regular training camp. Just to get to training camp isn’t an easy thing.”

Wherever it ends up taking each player, the journey begins this weekend.