The Bombers humble new star
By Scott Taylor, Photo credit Jeff Miller
This week, Winnipeg Blue Bombers
general manager Kyle Walters had a
particularly enjoyable experience – he
signed seven veteran free agents that,
if they’re ready to play, should make
the Bombers a better team that the one
that went 5-13 last season.
Among those new players was
runningback Andrew Harris.
Harris is a Winnipegger who has long
wanted to play for the Blue Bombers.
Although he’s 28, he still demonstrated
last season that he’s good enough to
compete and still possesses the speed
and durability that coaches are after. In
fact, he just finished a season in which
he carried 222 times for 1,039 yards
and seven touchdowns and caught
53 passes for 484 yards and two more
TDs. He was second in the CFL in
rushing and tied for second in rushing
touchdowns.
It seems Andrew Harris has always
been forced to make potentially lifechanging decisions. Sure, making big
decisions is a part of everyone’s life, but
Andrew Harris has been forced to make
them since he was a teenager.
Since deciding to leave Grant Park
High School when he was 16 in order
to move over to Oak Park High School,
Harris has been faced with more
choices than most young men his age.
To his credit, most of them have been
spot on.
“I was at Grant Park, playing football
and I really liked it there,” Harris
explained. “When I was young, I lived
in Steinbach and then my mom and
I moved into the city. Grant Park was
right down the street from my house.
It was easy to get to school and I was
having a lot of fun and a lot of success
playing football.
But there is a lot more to Andrew
Harris than simply carrying a football.
He’s not what you would call a
complicated young man, but he’s a
smart one who has used football to
make a better life for his family. His
story is inspiring…
“But I was starting to hang around
with a bad crowd, I guess you could
say, and it had a negative affect on my
life. I knew that if I was going to stay
out of trouble and make something
of myself, I had to make a change. So
I decided to transfer to Oak Park. It
20 / sportslife
wasn’t easy getting there. It sure wasn’t
convenient, but obviously it was the
right thing to do.”
As every football fan and casual
CFL observer knows, Winnipeg’s
Andrew Harris has become a Canadian
Football League superstar. He’s also a
two-time Manitoba Sportswriters and
Sportscasters Athlete of the Year, the
only man to have unseated Chicago
Blackhawks captain in the past seven
years.
It could be argued that Harris is the
most dangerous offensive weapon in
the CFL. He can run and catch and he’s
not a bad backfield blocker.
And yet getting to the CFL wasn’t
particularly easy for Harris. To be
fair, he took a rather circuitous route.
But it would appear that with all the
other decisions he made, his road to
professional football was, in the end,
the right one.
When he was young, Andrew’s mom,
Carlene Boivin, sometimes struggled
to pay the bills. In fact, Boivin, who is
now a highly-regarded Winnipeg social
worker, often worked two jobs to put
food on the table and a roof over her
small family’s heads.
“I always wanted to be a hockey
player when I was young,” said Harris
who still plays three times a week with
his buddies. “When I was young, my
heroes were Steve Yzerman and Paul
Kariya. I loved the game and still do
today.”
But while the Manitoba Junior
Hockey League and even the Western
Hockey League showed some interest
in Andrew, the cost to play the game at
a high level just became too much for
he and his mom to handle.
“The fees, the equipment, the travel
expenses, I don’t know how a lot of
families today that can afford it,” Harris
explained. “I played at a time when
composite sticks were just coming out.
They were about $100. I played with
a wooden stick, because I would go
through one every week. When I looked
around, I was the only one on the team