CALEB NICKERSON

PONTIAC May 13, 2020

While most kids that grow up in Canada are raised playing hockey, one local boy is looking to make a name for himself in the world of tackle football.

Rilen Richardson, 17, is a physically imposing lineman at 6 feet and nearly 300 lbs. He’s been playing for close to a decade in both Ontario and Quebec leagues, and despite the coronavirus interrupting this year’s season, he’s eagerly looking forward to an acceptance letter from John Abbott College to confirm the next step in his career on the gridiron. This past season he’s seen two championship games in two different provincial leagues, and has a ring to show off from his outing in Quebec.

His mother Sara said that Rilen was raised playing hockey with the team in Shawville, but was introduced to the sport of football though a chance encounter.

“We were in Gatineau for a tournament and … in between the tournament we had about three hours to spare, so we had gone to the mall,” she said. “The Gatineau Vikings had a table set up and they had invited him out to see their spring program.”

Rilen, who was already sporting a burly frame for his age, was immediately pegged as a lineman, putting his strength and size to use.

“My first year, my coaches were beyond surprised with my size at that age, so they put me right in the middle, right in front to knock everyone over,” he explained.

He said that the intensity of the hits in football is what drew him in initially, when his peers were all interested in Canada’s national pastime.

“It’s a whole different sport. I had grown up playing hockey and seeing football in the States, I [didn’t] hear too much about it in Canada,” he said about his first interaction with the representatives from the Vikings. “Once I saw it, with the helmets and the shoulder pads … it kinda drew me .. I always grew up wrestling with my dad, playing hockey you can’t really hit someone. Just the contact, it’s a game changer, especially for young teenagers growing up.”

While hockey is known as a sport that requires large financial and time commitments from parents, Sara said that football has a training regimen that’s equally, if not more intense. Practices start out at three nights a week at the lower age levels, with ten games a season played on the weekends. As the players grow older and the league becomes more competitive, film review of past games and longer practice sessions become the norm.

Sara added that for the Vikings, away games are played mainly in Montreal and the surrounding area on the weekends, which made for dozens of hours of travel every week during the regular season and even more in the playoffs. Back in 2017, Rilen started playing for a team based in Ontario, the Ottawa Sooners, during the spring season, to complement his time with the Vikings during the fall.

Sara noted that in addition to two hour practices four nights a week, being in an Ontario league means travelling as far as London and Windsor, Ont. for road games during the regular season. She said that this spring, with sports cancelled due to COVID-19, has been somewhat bittersweet.

“Unfortunately they don’t have football this year because of the circumstances, so this is the first time in years that we have not ran for football in the spring,” she said. “We all missed it, we missed the social [aspect], you miss … him being out on the field and training.”

Rilen started out as a defensive centre, plowing his way through opponents and making big tackles on quarterbacks.

Around 11 years old, he was shuffled over to defensive end, a slightly different role that still involves doling out plenty of physical punishment.

“You’re on the end of the line, you basically watch to make sure no one passes by you on the wide run,” he explained. “You watch the quarterback and hit him … You’re tackling someone every play, usually.”

He was soon added to the offensive line which meant more game time, but also more responsibilities and effort.

“After that is when I started to get into playing both sides of the ball, because our rosters, started to get very small,” he said. “Playing both sides, getting very few breaks was very hard on the body, I will admit, but I was getting good cardio, so it has it’s ups and downs.”

“I prefer the big hits on the defensive side, where you can run up and completely hit the quarterback,” he added. “It’s fun, but I can [also] use my size and strength on the offensive line.”

On the offence, Rilen is typically responsible for hiking the ball and has also served as the long-snapper, meaning he has to fire the ball back 15 feet for the kicker when his team decides to punt, a difficult task at the best of times.

“It’s one thing to pass the ball between your legs or maybe five yards behind you, but it’s extremely hard to hike a ball at a certain speed, at a certain height, where it’s going to be received in a certain area,” Sara explained. “You have a two- to three-second window to get it to that punter.”

The nature of his position leads to him putting his body on the line fairly often, which Sara admitted was difficult to witness.

“It does make you jump in your seat the odd time,” she said. “It is pretty hard to watch … them out there and being so forceful, but you do sign up for that. You have to know, going out there that they’re not going to be just tapping each other on the shoulders.”

“Depending on how close you are to the field, you can hear the friction, you can hear the thumps as they hit the ground,” she continued. “It can be intense, but on both teams, the Vikings or the Sooners, they’ve always had to have sports trainers there … They don’t take things lightly and they make sure every one of their players is well looked after.”

Rilen rattled off the injuries he’s sustained playing football as nonchalantly as reciting a grocery list, from concussions to broken fingers to a separated shoulder. He talked about one incident in particular, where his middle finger got caught in an opponent’s helmet and was snapped mid-game.

“My trainer taped up my two fingers and I went back out, but after the game I took my glove off and it was the size of two fingers and black and purple,” he said. “I could not move it at all [and] we went to hospital. They showed me the x-ray and I had five bones in my middle finger when you’re only supposed to have three.”

His concussions were taken seriously by his trainers, and he was essentially confined to his darkened room with a pair of sunglasses for several weeks.

“It was tough but you’ve gotta be careful,” he said.

Rilen said one of the proudest moments of his whole career came in his 2019 season. The Ottawa squad that he was a part of had just lost in the provincial championships, getting clobbered by the number one ranked Essex County Ravens.

His fall season with the Vikings started up immediately after, and Rilen said that he had spent the previous two years getting pummelled in the Quebec league and didn’t anticipate much success. Despite his low expectations, the Vikings made their way to the Quebec provincial finals and triumphed over the Châteauguay Raiders following a 10 win, two loss regular season.

Rilen said that the long hours of film review, as well as the knowledge of the game that he has picked up playing both offence and defence helped him reach the pinnacle of his football career thus far.

“The tapes helped a lot … because we can use both games that we played against them and some of the games that we’ve watched other teams play against them,” he explained. “We got going with the ball and we knew what their strategy was. They only had three major players and they always did the same thing. Once you get used to it, you know what’s going to happen.”

Sara remembered a different highlight from Rilen’s career, one that ex emplified his nature as a gentle giant.

During his last regular season game with the Sooners, one of the team’s water boys, who play in the lower age brackets, was trying to deliver a tray of water bottles to the team in a huddle.

“The games intense, it’s in August, super hot, this little boy’s running out with the tray and he doesn’t get five yards from the sidelines and he trips and all the water bottles go everywhere,” Sara recalled. “Rilen [was] the only player out of the 55 player roster … and 10 coaches, he’s the only one that stepped out on the field. The poor little boy was so embarrassed, all upset. Rilen bent down, picked up all the bottles, helped him up, gave him a pat on the back. He made the little boy feel so much better, not embarrassed. His head coach turned around and looked at us like, ‘Yep, that would be your son.’”

Rilen is currently waiting on an acceptance letter from John Abbott College in Montreal for their Business and Marketing program, after being approached by their coaching staff at a provincial combine. Beyond representing the Islanders during his CEGEP years, he hopes to go on to play high level university football and make it to the big show.

“That would be the ultimate goal, to play in the States,” he said, acknowledging that it would be a difficult path to take. “Football in the States is like hockey in Canada.”

Already he’s accumulated numerous awards for his play, beyond the enormous ring from the big win in 2019, from MVP of particular games to MVP Lineman for the championship game, as well as playing on several All-Star teams.

His mother said that she is glad that all the hours of work that he has put in have paid off.

“You become so proud as parents to see your kid succeed and do so well in something,” she said.