Every year, dozens of American CFL players adopt their team’s city as a year-round home, with some even making the change permanent.
You can safely assume that Dedrick Mills will not be one of those considering official immigration.
The Stampeders’ veteran running back spent his offseason in Calgary for the first time this year and was brutally honest about the prospect of it happening again.
“It was pretty cold, man. I think I would never spend another offseason in Canada —period,” Mills told reporters at training camp this week. “I was here and I was in Nova Scotia with my girlfriend. Never again. Not here, not in Canada.”
Temperatures dropped as low as -28.5 degrees Celsius this winter in Calgary, with an average of -5.5 degrees from November through February. It is unclear when Mills took his vacation to the Maritimes but conditions in Halifax weren’t much better, with a low of -16.2 degrees in February and temperatures firmly in the negatives throughout the offseason.
While Mills had some prior experience with cold weather from his two collegiate seasons spent at the University of Nebraska, temperatures in Lincoln rarely fall as low as Cowtown’s. The chilly conditions were a far cry from his hometown of Waycross, Ga., where the thermometer rarely shows anything below zero even in the coldest months.
“I stayed in the house every day. I didn’t come out,” Mills said of his coping mechanism. “And if I came out, it was for a workout and then I’d go back in. I just stayed there and watched TV.”
The 28-year-old is entering his fourth season with the Stampeders and his second as the projected number-one running back. In 33 career CFL games, he has carried 372 times for 2,184 yards and seven touchdowns, while adding 65 catches for 555 yards through the air.
With his focus remaining locked on football, he acknowledges his opinion of the Canadian winter was likely coloured by a hesitancy to embrace some of the quintessential snow sports available.
“I’m not much of a skater, skier, none of that. I’ve never been skiing or snowboarding,” Mills acknowledged. “When I’m done playing football, I will try it out. Right now, injury (risk), I can’t do that right now.”
The Stampeders won’t care where Mills spends his winter or how rarely he ventures outside, just so long as he performs well this summer and fall.
The post ‘Never again’: Stampeders’ RB Dedrick Mills vows not to spend another offseason in Canada after frigid Calgary winter appeared first on 3DownNation.
