VANCOUVER — Garrett Rooker has spent so much time on UBC’s Point Grey campus the past few months that the suburban Houston, TX neighbourhood of his youth may have, for the time being, defaulted in its status to that of his ‘second’ home.
“I spent most of my summer here,” admitted the Thunderbirds’ fourth-year quarterback and resident magician before a Tuesday practice ahead of Friday’s 6 p.m. Canada West season-opener at home to the Alberta Golden Bears.
“It’s just hard for me not to (stay), being focussed on football and having a big year, especially my last year,” continued Rooker, whose stunning return last season from a devastating hip injury suffered in late 2022 was not only an exercise in courage, but wound up serving as the very pulse of a heart-stopping 9-3 campaign, one which, of course, ended one win shy of the national title in the Vanier Cup.
And all of that is a big part of why the 6-foot-3, 205-pound Rooker made a concerted effort to keep Thunderbird Stadium well within his sights throughout the off-season.
Given the timelines associated with his season-ending hip injury, suffered in late October of 2022 during a home win over Saskatchewan, he somehow beat back the calendar and was ready to go come Week 1 of last season.
Yes, those 3,471 passing yards and 23 touchdowns passes of a season ago did a pretty fair job of camouflaging the fact that the gutsy Rooker was still at a point in his comeback that not every weapon in his on-field arsenal was available at his beck and call.
Fast forward 12 months, however, and Rooker finds himself in a much more empowered headspace.
Instead of working to beat the clock, he was finally able to take that figurative deep breath at season’s end, then get back to work with the thought that his regimen was back to being about pushing towards new heights, all of it a welcome reprieve from the grind of physical rehabilitation.
“For me it was huge just to have a full off-season after the injury,” he said. “It was to build my strength back up again. I don’t think I was totally where I wanted to be last year. I just made it. Post-rehab, in terms of strength, I was fully healed and I was moving well. But that last re-hab was just to get back to where you were. And now I’ve actually pushed myself to get stronger, to get faster. So that was huge for me.”
UBC’s veteran third-year guard Ben Griffin — who came to the team in the same 2020-21 dual recruiting class as Rooker — admits it’s not hard for he and his fellow offensive linemen to go to battle each week with a player who he says exemplifies sacrifice for his team.
“Garrett is my quarterback, he’s my guy,” said the 6-foot-3, 305-pound Griffin. “When I am out there, I am doing everything I can to make sure he doesn’t get hit, that he’s got all the time in the world to make the sick throws that he can make… and you know, I was with him that day when he was in the hospital, at Vancouver General. It was tough to see cause it’s a teammate and a guy you came into the program with and someone you care for. To see him go through something like that, it hurts. We all want to play for Garrett, but we also all want to play for each other. We’ll do anything to make sure we don’t disappoint each other.”
It’s an understatement to say Rooker’s return last season was a giant step forward for both him and the program, and nothing about it was lost on ‘Birds head coach Blake Nill.
“Last year he was probably 70 per cent, and when you look at him this year, he looks even bigger than he ever was,” Nill said, noting the more pronounced frame Rooker carried throughout training camp.”
Which, of course, transitions smoothly to Friday’s season opener against the same Alberta program Rooker and the ‘Birds somehow found a way to set down 28-27 in a Hardy Cup for the ages last season.
In what was unassailably one of the most dramatic wins in UBC football history, Rooker led the ‘Birds on a six-play, 95-yard drive with 52 seconds remaining, culminating with a 13-yard TD strike to receiver Sam Davenport to tie the game, setting the stage for kicker Kieran Flannery-Fleck’s walk-off extra-point.
On that drive alone, the chemistry Rooker showed with not only Davenport (three catches for 49 yards) but with fellow receiver Shemar McBean on a 63-yard completion, resulted in team’s most dramatic home-field moments since the 2015 Vanier Cup-winning season.
“Obviously those are two of our leaders in the wide receiver room, two Canada West all-stars and two of the guys that led us down the field to win the Hardy Cup,” said Rooker of Davenport and McBean, among the leaders of a receiver room perhaps deeper top to bottom than at any stage of Nill’s decade-long era-in-progress at UBC.
It’s a room filled with too many names to mention in its entirety, but includes veterans like fifth-year Edgerrin Williams-Hernandez, the fourth-year, converted running back Dane Kapler, and new blood like rising second-year Ches Rednour-Bruckman.
If there’s a theme to all of this with Rooker, however, it’s not to fall prey to the exercise of reminiscence.
“This group always remembers the great times we had last season, but we’re just using all of that as motivation for this season,” he added “I think we have a really focussed group thus far and all the guys can make plays this year.”
And the depth at receiver is no doubt the envy of the conference.
“We were in training camp and we looked at our second group and every single one of those guys in the second group had started at least a game last year,” Rooker said. “Looking back on all of that stuff is good, but we’re completely focussed on Friday night and winning this first game.”
After all, it is Rooker’s final season.
Or is it?
“The thing that is great for UBC is that we have him for two years,” Nill said.
Does the head coach know something that no one else knows?
“He may not be back… but he still has two years of eligibility left,” Nill counters. “They all say they are not coming back, but then…”
Hey, who knows? And you can’t blame Nill for hoping.
Like Michael O’Connor before him, Garrett Rooker has done nothing but add to the legacy of UBC Thunderbirds quarterbacks.
And from the perspective of Blue-and-Gold nation, who would ever want that to end?
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