By Stampeders.com staff

You’ve won a Grey Cup, a Most Outstanding Player award, three Most Outstanding Canadian awards and recognition as Canada’s athlete of the year.

You’ve won the league rushing title three consecutive seasons, outrushing your closest pursuer by nearly 1,600 yards in the process, and have become a fixture on post-season all-star teams. Members of the media joke that the league’s Canadian player of the week award may as well be renamed in your honour because you win it so often.

Your goal? To get even better, naturally.

“I want to top what I did in 2013,” said Calgary Stampeders running back Jon Cornish. “That’s my goal.”

Please note that Cornish didn’t say 2014, a season that saw him sit out half the regular season, but 2013 when the New Westminster, B.C., native produced the fourth-best rushing season in CFL history and shattered his own mark for the best yardage total by a Canadian.

Cornish, however, is convinced that he’s capable of more and his production during a nine-game 2014 regular season suggests that he might have a point. Calgary’s No. 9 won the rushing title despite all the missed time and was racking up yardage that would have allowed him to break Mike Pringle’s 16-year-old record of 2,065 had he been able to maintain the pace over 18 games.

“Jon is truly at the top of his game,” said Stamps head coach and general manager John Hufnagel, “and there’s no doubt he has a lot of football left in him. I look forward to seeing what he can do in 2015.”

With the head and neck injuries that limited his playing time a year ago a thing of the past, Cornish is working hard in the off-season to push himself to even greater heights and help the Stampeders defend their Grey Cup title.

“We want to win it again,” said Cornish. “We don’t want to go back to that situation from years past when we knew how it felt to be so close to the top, but not be able to get there.”

Cornish sees no evidence that his teammates are satisfied with one championship. If anything, last year’s success has the Stamps hungry for more.

“It’s been a little bit different of an off-season, coming off a championship season,” he said. “Everybody has been working really hard. We’ve had more players in the locker room and in the weight room this off-season than we’ve ever had here.”

As determined as Cornish is to improve his own game, what’s really got him excited is the potential of the Calgary offence.

“Everybody knew that when Bo Levi Mitchell got his chance,” said Cornish, “we had a good chance of winning the championship. I know he’s signed up for another four and I’ll be here for at least another two, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what we can do together.

“We had a newcomer like Eric Rogers who was so impressive when he came into the lineup at the end of the season. We have Jeff Fuller coming back. We have a great corps of receivers and a great offensive line.

“I know we lost a couple of our starters on the o-line, but if you look at our o-line in 2012 and our o-line in 2014, it was completely different but we made it to the Grey Cup both years. I’m really excited about the potential of our offence and the team as a whole.

“Every guy in the locker-room now knows we’re capable of it. We have to continue to work as hard as we have, if not harder because every other team in the league is going to step up accordingly. As long as we do the things we have to do, we should be in a good place at the start of the season.”

>> Stamps TV: Cornish ready to roll