By Rita Mingo
Calgary Herald

Most athletes pick up a ball or stick or racquet and begin to hone their skills at a tender age in order to reach the elite level in their chosen sport.

That’s one way of getting there. The other is the one Etienne Légaré took that eventually propelled him into the Canadian Football League.

The Calgary Stampeders’ defensive lineman — who came over in May in a trade from the Edmonton Eskimos — first picked up the pigskin at the uncommonly advanced age of 20 and only because others said he should.

“I was in CEGEP, I had a few friends playing football and they said ‘Etienne, man, you should just come to practice one day. You’re tall and big,’ ” he recalled. “I was playing basketball back in the days, so I said, OK, sure, so I went for practice and the coach said ‘we want you’ and I started playing there. It’s as simple as that.

“Where I’m from, my home town (Saint-Raymond, Que.), we didn’t have any football team. It was basketball and that’s it. Football wasn’t really popular. So that’s why I’m kind of late. I’ve been really lucky with my coaches because they were patient with me. I showed a lot of interest and was doing what they were asking so they put a lot of hours in me and it paid off.”

Stamps’ D-line coach DeVone Claybrooks agreed that that isn’t the usual path to a productive pro career.

“Oh no, that’s a very rare thing,” said Claybrooks. “And not only to start playing so late, but to be as successful as he’s been and to have accomplished the things he has. But I can actually see why; he puts in extra work on the field, he puts in extra time in the film room, and when you do those little things, it speeds up your learning curve.’’

Légaré went on to have a stellar CIS career at Laval, where he won numerous individual honours as well as a pair of national championships. He was a first-round pick of the Toronto Argonauts in 2009, and was later traded to Edmonton. It was from there that the Stamps plucked the 6-foot-3, 275-pounder.

“It’s no fun being traded, but going to an organization that you know people want you there makes everything way easier,” the 30-year-old noted. “The transition is way smoother. You can fit into that scheme and, yeah, it’s great to know you’re wanted.”’

Légaré underwent major shoulder surgery in December and it’s taken him until just of late to get back into playing mode. In fact, Sept. 13 against Hamilton was his first game action since the 2012 Labour Day rematch in Edmonton, while with the Eskimos.

“Yeah, finally, exactly,” he smiled. “It was a year and a week of waiting to go back on the field. That’s a long time. You just stay busy. You go to meetings, keep doing rehab, hanging around the team, staying with your unit. I was trying to keep track, even if I wasn’t practising on the field.

“It takes a little bit of time. Those guys have been working together for nine weeks, so they have the timing, those little signs about what you’re going to do that makes everything solid on the line. When someone new, like me, comes in, just to get that timing there, to be on the same page, yeah, it takes a little time to get synchronized.”

Canadian depth on the defensive line is what the Stamps have in Légaré — he recorded six sacks in a season and a half — and now that he’s back in the groove, the football club will be looking for even more.

“We had the luxury of taking our time and bring him along, getting him acclimated to our system and the way we do things, and he’s hit the ground running,” added Claybrooks. “He had to knock off the rust, but we expect bigger and better things as the season progresses.”