By Howard Tsumura
VANCOUVER — There were so many positives revealing themselves on the field last Friday at Thunderbird Stadium as part of UBC’s season-saving 23-22 win over the Calgary Dinos.
So many, in fact, that we restricted our initial look at the victory from the standpoint of the ‘Birds ability to produce four massive defensive plays which effectively set the table for a second-half offensive feast.
Yet if you had the chance to study the faces of UBC players in the moments after victory, as they wandered around the field hugging their fellow teammates, it was hard to say that anyone was having a greater visceral reaction to the moment at hand than one of the team’s true elder statesman.
“It was all about everyone (on the offensive line) coming together and finding a way to win the game,” said Gavin Coakes, who just seconds prior was being steadied by his teammates amidst the tears of joy that were streaming down the face of the 6-foot-4, 315-pound fifth-year centre.
“We all came together as a family, as five guys with one heartbeat who needed to find a way,” added Coakes, a Winnipeg native selected in the fourth round of the 2025 CFL draft by the Toronto Argonauts.
Being able to run the football is at the core of every offence, and that is no different at UBC.
Yet it’s not so easy to maintain at the highest standards when in 2023 you lose your two starting tackles — Theo Benedet and Giovanni Manu — to the NFL, and then this past season lose your record-setting running back — Isaiah Knight — to the CFL.
“I think they were watching tonight,” Coakes said hopefully of Benedet and Manu back stateside preparing for Week 3 of the NFL season. “It’s a happy night for everyone.”
With all of that said, it’s been no secret that the UBC run game has struggled mightily to find a new identity in 2025.
And from a low-water mark of just 11 total yards gained along the ground as a team as part of a 51-14 thrashing at the hands of the Saskatchewan Huskies back on Sept. 5, the climb back to respectability has not come without an entire positional room coming together at challenging themselves to fight even harder for each other.
“It’s been a long time coming for us, we’ve got a few younger guys and now we’re all finally starting to gel,” said Coakes, who may well have more Canada West snaps under his belt than any other current UBC player on either side of the ball.
His reason for optimism?
Since its low ebb against the Huskies, the road to recovery has been steady, and last Friday UBC enjoyed its best moments yet in the run game this season. At once affirming, it embedded in them all of the benefits that a ball-control offence has to offer.
Quarterback Drew Viotto’s 32-yard strike to receiver Shemar McBean was a huge part of the team’s final touchdown-scoring drive of the game on Friday.
But perhaps even more significant was the confidence-building boost the offensive line afforded its running game, helping Tolu Ayedegbe not only find the end zone for a three-yard TD run which eventually pulled UBC to within 22-20 with 2:11 remaining, but helped make Ayedegbe the team’s first 100-yard rusher of the season.
The 5-foot-9, 205-pound Ayedegbe carried 16 times for 106 yards and two touchdowns on the night, including a massive 38-yard gainer in the first half which led to a Kieran Flannery-Fleck field goal. He finished with a 6.6 yards-per-carry average.
“I can’t say enough about how hard he runs the ball,” Coakes said of Ayedegbe afterwards. “He finds the holes. He’s a downhill runner, just a tough guy. That’s what you need in a running back. Someone who’s going to cram it in there, and get in the paint when you need it.”
WHAT COMES AROUND, GOES AROUND
Stick around the program for as long as Coakes has since coming to the Point Grey campus as a freshman in 2021 out of Winnipeg’s Sturgeon Heights Collegiate and you go from a young and hungry first-year to a savvy fifth-year who gets a chance to leave the program having played a huge role in elevating UBC’s national status as an offensive linemen factory
The origin story?
It all takes place over the middle stages of the 2022 season, following a 21-13 loss at home to the Regina Rams in which UBC managed to rush for just 71 yards as a team, a stat made all the more concerning in that it plunged the team’s record to 1-3 to start the season.
At that stage, current NFLers Giovanni Manu and Theo Benedet were a pair of third-years who had ascended to roles as the ‘Birds two starting tackles, and Coakes was the team’s starting left guard.
Head coach Blake Nill was at odds as he scratched his head for a complete solution, yet his subsequent moves not only set in motion the blueprint of the 2023 team’s run to the Vanier Cup national title game, but established the bones of its trenches which are still in place, sans its two NFLers.
Nill kept the right side of his line in tact, with Benedet at tackle and Salmon Arm’s Brandon Sanford, who would later sign with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, at guard.
On the left side, however, he made big changes.
That season, UBC moved Coakes over to centre, moved Manu to left guard and pulled freshman Riley Scheffer into the starting rotation at left tackle. (Note — Manu returned to his left tackle spot in 2024 en route to being a fourth-round NFL pick).
“He’s a 19-year-old freshman and he is a hell of an athlete,” Nill said then of the current fourth-year Scheffer, when I asked him three years ago about the towering product out of Victoria’s Belmont Secondary who now seems well positioned ahead of the 2026 pro drafts.
In hindsight, Scheffer’s ability to step right in to the mix in 2022 was the single biggest key to the line’s transformation, one which also showed the pro scouts the versatility of both Manu and Coakes.
How successful was the move?
From its 1-3 start at the midway mark of the 2022 season, UBC proceeded to go on a 13-4 run through to the opening kickoff of the 2023 Vanier Cup national final.
THE SUM TOTAL OF TEARS OF JOY
The reason for your author’s desire to re-visit the genesis of the current UBC offensive line?
While Manu and Benedet have gone on to NFL careers, the impact both Coakes and Scheffer have had as the elders amongst a trio of rising standouts including third-year right tackle Navjot Pooni (6-4, 270, Langley Secondary), second-year left tackle Caleb Cunningham (6-7, 300, Okanagan Sun) and second-year right guard Axel Statton (6-6, 295, PoCo-Terry Fox Secondary) can’t be overstated.
Their roots go back to an on-field lab at Thunderbird Stadium which included future Detroit Lions- and Chicago Bears-identified talent.
And now, with veteran savvy and youthful enthusiasm finding its best mix, the Birds (2-2) are counting on it all continuing to gain momentum as UBC heads to Edmonton for a Friday clash against the winless Alberta Golden Bears (0-4).
“These young guys (come) at me, they work their asses off,” Coakes is proud to declare of their workouts and practices. “They’ve got my back and I’ve got theirs.”
Of course it’s not yet at last season’s level in the ways that it was with Isaiah Knight carrying the ball.
But Coakes just keeps looking ahead.
Day by day, every day we get better,” he sums. “What we say is that every day we pick up one thing and get better at it. And that’s over the days, the weeks, the months. Over seasons…”
It’s simple math.
And when it all begins to start adding up, like it did last Friday night, it’s okay to lose track of the amount of tears shed.
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