Dozen canadians at Oregon camps

Martin Duckhorn (left) and Matt Newlove were among the more than a dozen Canadians at Oregon’s football camp last week.

The major football recruiting hotspots for Oregon and Oregon State are up and down the West Coast of the United States.

[URL]http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindbeaversbeat/2010/06/canadian_football_prospects_ta.html

In the future, British Columbia might have to be added to that list.

The Ducks and Beavers football camps ended last week and both camps saw Canadian athletes in attendance, hoping, just like the hundreds of U.S. campers, to improve their skills and impress the schools’ coaches.

Christian Covington, an up-and-coming senior defensive end from Vancouver College, was one of 1,068 players who attended Oregon State’s four-day camp.

Covington, who hopes to play college football in the United States and eventually make it to the NFL, has the pedigree to back his dream. His father, Grover Covington, is the all-time sacks leader of the Canadian Football League and is in the CFL Hall of Fame.

“There are some Canadian schools that I’m looking at, but the NCAA is really where I want to be, to be honest,” the younger Covington said.

Although Christian Covington was one of only two Canadians at last week’s camp football, coach Mike Riley estimated that 10 Canadians have worked out at Oregon State football camps in recent weeks.

“We’ve got more and more guys doing unofficial visits from Canada,” Oregon State director of football operations Dan Van De Riet said. “They drive to UW, here and Oregon.”

Oregon had 14 Canadian players at their five-day camp this year, and in 2008 had an entire Canadian team attend.

Pat Sheahan, the coach at Queen’s University in Ontario, said he has noticed a recent increase in the popularity of football, especially after Montreal’s Tshimanga Biakabutuka made a splash at the University of Michigan. Nicknamed “Touchdown Tim,” Biakabutuka holds the Wolverines’record for rushing yards in a season and was a first round pick in the 1996 NFL draft.

“It’s my impression that the number of Canadian kids playing football has increased dramatically over the past five years,” Sheahan said. “There was a true explosion after Tshimanga Biakabutuka. … Colleges in America started to look at Canada as a legitimate recruiting ground.”

Riley is among those who have taken notice.

Although sophomore cornerback Keynan Parker is the only Canadian on the 2010-11 Beavers roster, Riley said British Columbia in the future may be an important destination for Oregon State recruiters.

“I would say that’s almost highly probable, because of the proximity,” Riley said. “We treat it like an extension of Washington.”

One reason for the increasing popularity for football in Canada might have to do with the fact that hockey — Canada’s most popular sport — is extremely competitive. Sheahan noted that since a large portion NHL rosters, and even Canadian junior hockey leagues, are now composed of U.S. and international players, there are fewer hockey opportunities for Canadians than in decades past.

“By and large the dream of any Canadian kid is to be a hockey player,” Sheahan said. “It is without a doubt the No. 1 sport and therefore has become very, very selective. Now, if a kid isn’t playing at the highest level of hockey, he sort of looks around at other sports where he might excel.”

But Sheahan admitted that the sport itself must become more popular before Canadian football can be compared to the U.S. high school football scene.

“In some certain communities it might even be starting to rival hockey, but I’m just not convinced that the very best high school athletes are competing in football. In America, that pretty much is the case: that the best athletes, even though they might also play baseball or basketball, also play football.”

Riley said that when he was coach of the Canadian Football League’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers from 1987-90, the Canadian players he saw were often unpolished.

“(They were) good athletes, but they were raw,” he said.

Still, Grover Covington hopes that his son will get a fair evaluation from U.S. college coaches.

“You know what, football is football,” he said. “Nowadays it doesn’t matter where in the world you come from. Whether it’s a small school or big school, people will look at you.”

— Contributions from The Oregonian’s Tyson Alger and Rachel Bachman

— R.J. Rico

R.J. Rico, The Oregonian

Photo: Rachel Bachman/The Oregonian