CALGARY - It was shortly before the Canadian Football League draft, and Karl McCartney was at home in the Bahamas, surfing the Internet.

 

The 22-year-old linebacker was coming off a solid season with the Saint Mary's University Huskies, and despite not being invited to the CFL's Evaluation Camp, he fully expected to be picked on May 2, so he was checking out TSN's Duane Forde, quite rightly considered the authoritative voice on such matters, and his position-by-position rankings of draft-eligible players.

 

But beside his name, he was stunned to read the following passage: "Once a prized recruit, he is now done with football."

 

As it turned out, part of that was correct. He was done with university football (he'd made that clear to the Saint Mary's coaching staff, who, it would seem, conveyed a garbled version of that message to Forde). But he had never ruled out playing in the CFL.

 

"I was very surprised," admitted McCartney, who had left Saint Mary's to work in a family-owned wholesale automobile parts business in Nassau. "I thought I could make a call and try to clear things up, but it was so close to the draft and so late, I just let it go by the wayside."

 

Thankfully for McCartney, the Calgary Stampeders decided to do some research of their own.

 

They got in touch with McCartney, who assured them that, yes, he was still interested in playing, and to prove it, he paid his own way to a football camp in Florida and was put through two days of drills.

 

The tape of those drills was sent to Calgary, and the Stampeders liked what they saw enough to pick him in the fifth round, 37th overall -- a selection they hope can turn into one of the steals of the draft.

 

There's no question in McCartney's mind that the pre-draft buzz around him being through with football negatively affected him on draft day.

 

"Definitely. It doesn't really bother me, though," he said. "The Stamps are a good team and I get to play with two good friends, Taurean (Allen) and Matt Henry, who I played with on Team Canada in '06.

 

"And I'm using it (not being drafted higher) as motivation to show guys that I can play at the next level.

 

"This is my time to show them." He's hoping to be the second Bahamian on the Stamps' roster, joining veteran offensive lineman Godfrey Ellis. Interestingly, the two had never met until Mc-Cartney got to Calgary, but their fathers are close friends back in the Bahamas.

 

McCartney learned to play football attending high school at a private boarding school in Toronto. He was sent there by his parents to develop his skills. His swimming skills, that is.

 

"I was ranked in the top three in the Caribbean in my age group," said McCartney. "But after my first year (in Toronto), I grew five inches, and I was six feet tall, 220 pounds, at 14. So they just put me on the football field and rugby field."

 

He doesn't swim a lot anymore. "My body wasn't build for swimming, obviously," he said with a chuckle. "I was always a big, broad guy compared to the tall, scrawny swimmers."

 

But he remains entirely confident that he could still take care of business in the pool if matched with his prospective teammates.

 

"Oh, yeah," he nodded. "Anyone here. Guaranteed."

 

acameron@theherald.canwest.com

 

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This page last modified Sunday, 07-Nov-2010 16:43:31 AST