Football: Matt Chapdelaine joining Simon Fraser

The Simon Fraser Clan has added receiver Matt Chapdelaine, who many people thought was headed to Queen's to play with his brother, Justin, a rookie quarterback.

It's a neat angle to have one of the sons of B.C. Lions offensive coordinator Jacques Chapdelaine (the former Laval coach) playing for SFU. No doubt some Queen's fans will be disappointed to only have one Chapdelaine. Talking to Clan offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Shawn Olson, it sounds like each player found a good fit. Olson sees Matt Chapdelaine, who has had some concussion woes over the past two years since playing at Alberta in 2006, coming in and push for playing time at either wideout or inside receiver.

"He's been to one to two of our throwarounds and the reviews from all our players have been very good," Olson said. "It's early in the process, but you can tell Matt is a very good athlete, he's big, he's physical. If he can stay healthy, I believe he's going to be one of the better receivers in Canada West."

There is also the son-of-a-coach factor.

"Something you get talking to Matt is that he's very intelligent and you can tell he's been coached well. He does things and does things quickly that I've been trying to get our guys to do for a couple years."

Olson added that Chapdelaines considered SFU. However, the Clan have a "packed house situation" at quarterback.

Bernd Dittrich
emerged as the starter last fall when SFU went from a winless season in '07 to a 5-3 record and a spot in the Canada West final. Ryan Schwartz of North Vancouver has had a year in the system. Newcomer Caleb Clark, who spent four years (one as a redshirt) at Western Michigan, has enroled at Simon Fraser to do his MBA, so he provides an experienced option. At Queen's, fifth-year QB Dan Brannagan has taken almost every snap for the last four seasons.

"For Justin, it wasn't a good fit at Simon Fraser because of our our quarterback situation," Olson says. "We have our starter (Dittrich) going into his third year and a redshirt freshman (Schwartz) whom we're very excited about, plus we had a chance to add an experienced backup from the NCAA and there's only so much scholarship money."

Simon Fraser and UBC will kick off the season on Aug. 29.

(Note to readers: There are not enough hours in the day to do this all the time, but it seemed newsworthy and it contradicted previous posts, so duty called.)
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1 comment:

  1. Nice post. i learned many more about football. thanks for the posting.

    ReplyDelete