It’s great to be able to sign with the Stampeders. I get to go home and I get to play in front of family and friends. That’s a big deal because it’s something I haven’t been able to do for a lot of years now because it was a struggle for my friends and family to watch me play when I was going to school at Nevada.
Playing so close to home is a great situation for me.
My first two years at Nevada, I didn’t have many family members come down to see me play. Football isn’t really a big sport in my family — it’s not something I was born into or anything like that, it’s something I did on my own. But as soon as my parents did come down to watch me play and they realized how big of a deal it was and how fun the games were, then they kept coming. It kind of took them a while.
I would football has really grown on my family. I don’t if I’d ever walk into the room and they would just have a random football game on, but I think they really enjoy watching me play.
It was a great situation for me to be at Nevada and learn to play the pistol offence. The past couple of years, we set quite a few big-time records in NCAA football — especially rushing records like when we averaged seven yards a carry in 2009 — and it was just great to be a part of it and to be able to share that with my teammates.
My last year and getting named to the All-WAC first team was very satisfying. I was pretty disappointed that I wasn’t named an all-conference player as a junior but to get that honour as a senior felt great and it felt even greater to win a WAC championship with my teammates.
The funny thing about going to school at Nevada is that a lot of people thought I was going to UNLV — the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Every time someone I knew was going to Vegas, they’d call me up and say: “Hey, I’m coming down to Vegas, are you going to come see me?”
And I’d answer, “Well, that’s about seven hours of driving from where I am here in Reno, but thanks for the invite.”
I’ll admit I didn’t know that much about it when they first told me about the school. When I first arrived there, the area reminded me of Drumheller — it’s like a desert area with mountains around you. It’s definitely a different place and it was a good five years there for me. I’ve got no complaints and if I had to do it all over again, I’m sure I would.
Now that I’m moving on to my professional career, I’m going to come to training camp, work hard and hope to earn a lot of playing time for the Stampeders and hope to help the team win as many games as possible.
John Bender, #69
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