When Yelm High School senior Nathan Ford announced his intentions to close his college football recruitment and pursue a career in the United States Army in November, he never truly shut the door on his football journey.
He couldn’t. Football was everything to him. But Ford was just waiting for the right door to open to continue his football career, and he received it last week when he signed with the Calgary Colts of the Canadian Junior Football League Feb. 3.
Ford will head to Calgary for spring training in May for a couple of days before leaving in the first week of July for the season.
The seed to play in Canada was planted when Ford and his family met Bol Bol, a foreign exchange student from Canada who spent his senior year at YHS, and Jermaine Brown, one of Bol’s coaches, while on a visit to Washington State University. Ford and his father, Cory, connected with the coach and kept tabs, and that connection came in handy after Ford’s senior year came to an end.
“After I closed my recruiting and then opened it back up again, I wasn’t getting much love from colleges, so my dad texted Jermaine Brown, who was one of the assistant coaches for the Calgary Colts,” Ford said. “He told my dad that since we helped him out by helping Bol out, he’d help us out. He talked to all the coaches and showed them my film, and they liked me and wanted me to be a part of their team.”
Ford said he enjoyed the idea of joining the military after high school but wanted to write one more chapter in his football journey.
“I tried sticking out the military thing for a little bit, but then I realized that I made an emotional decision after the last game and realized I missed football a lot,” he said. “I wanted to go back, and the Calgary Colts wanted to give me a chance.”
Ford broke his collarbone in Yelm’s second game of the season against Lincoln and was convinced that his senior year was over. But he returned to action just six weeks later against Olympia and finished the season. He said his faith was tested numerous times this school year, from the injury to facing the reality that his dream of playing for a Division I school would likely not come true.
“God didn’t really want me to give it up yet, so he gave me another chance. It was crazy stressful trying to get healthy again and I was hoping colleges would offer me after I came back,” Ford said. “My dream was to really go DI and that’s all I wanted to do, and once I realized I wasn’t going to go DI straight out of high school, I kind of lost the drive to keep playing, but I kept going. Once the Colts offered me, that passion and all that love came back again.”
Ford is looking forward to learning a different version of the game of football that features 12 players on each side of the ball rather than 11 in the United States. He thanked his Yelm coaches, teammates and the community for fostering his development and supporting him through the highs and lows of his four-year career.
“All of my teammates and my coaches have supported me in whatever I wanted to do after I graduated high school,” he said. “I just want to say thank you to all of the people who have helped me and listened to and supported me through all my decisions that I’ve made throughout high school and have guided me to where I am now.”
