Jorgen Hus pondered retirement over a period of several months, as winter changed into spring.
And when it was time to announce the decision, the perils of winter had returned.
On Thursday, Hus and his family — his wife (Kenzi) and two daughters (Makaia and Livvy) — weathered treacherous highway conditions to make the trek to Regina from their home in Saskatoon.
“I was white-knuckle driving pretty much the whole time,” Hus, 36, said during a media conference at a snow-swept Mosaic Stadium. “We were doing 38 (kilometres an hour) for 45 minutes. Then we got up to 45K and I was thinking, ‘Well, maybe we’ll make it …’ ”
Although the vehicle slowed down at times, its driver never did.
Hus was at the top of his game throughout his 10th CFL season, which concluded with the Corey Mace-coached Roughriders’ 25-17 Grey Cup victory over the Montreal Alouettes on Nov. 16 at Winnipeg.
The confetti had yet barely stopped flying at Princess Auto Stadium when Grey Cup MVP Trevor Harris was in Hus’s ear, imploring him to return.
“Trevor planted that bug in my ear really early in the off-season: ‘Back-to-back … it has never been done (in Saskatchewan) … let’s do this,’ ” Hus recalled. “So, yeah, I was thinking about it.
“I was pretty sure after the game in Winnipeg that it was my last time, but it’s easy to say then. February and March were tough months to make that decision. When it comes down to it, it’s a tough decision to make, for sure.”
In fact, the Roughriders took one final lighthearted shot at changing his mind.
“We spent the last couple of months trying to convince you not to come and sit up here,” said Vice-President of Football Operations and General Manager Jeremy O’Day, sitting beside Hus on an elevated platform in the stadium’s media room.
“You’ve got a couple of more minutes to change your mind.”
No such luck.
“I started thinking about it two years ago, but I knew we had unfinished business here,” said Hus, a Saskatoon-based mortgage broker.
“I love what Coach Mace has done here with this team and the culture and everything. I knew we had a really good chance of winning, so it wasn’t too hard to want to come back last year.
“During last season, I knew that it was probably going to be my last year. I’ve got things outside football pulling me away. I had a surgery, too, so that doesn’t help.
“It has been a long, fun career. It has been over a decade. We won the Grey Cup. We’re champs. My cup is full, so it was the right decision to make.”
So ended an association with the sport that began outside the Ted and Kristi Hus residence, where Jorgen and his brother, Jason, tossed around the football.
“I started playing this game 23 years ago with my brother,” Jorgen Hus reflected. “We were in the backyard or on the street, just running routes and all that. Fast forward 23 years and here we are, leaving the game as a Grey Cup champion. It has been pretty wild.
“I’m a true believer that none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for family and community. There was the support of my brother, catching tens of thousands of snaps so I could get noticed. It’s crazy, the amount of support that he gave.”
And then there are the coaches — Scott Hundseth and Darin West with the St. Joseph Guardians high school football team, Tom Sargeant with the Saskatoon Hilltops, Frank McCrystal of the University of Regina Rams, to cite just a few — and an incalculable number of teammates.
One of them, former Rams quarterback Marc Mueller, was at Thursday’s media conference. Mueller is entering his third season as the Roughriders’ Offensive Co-ordinator. On top of being long-time friends, they are now connected as CFL champions.
Hus has always been a champion of community endeavours. An inexhaustible Player Ambassador for the Saskatchewan Roughrider Foundation, he received the CFL’s Jake Gaudaur Veterans’ Award in 2024. The award recognizes a Canadian CFL player who best demonstrates the attributes of Canada’s Veterans — strength, perseverance, courage, comradeship and contribution to Canadian communities.
Honestly, an entire, extended article could focus on his achievements and not include a word about football. Factor in his sporting accomplishments and that is a lot to digest in one day, in one story.
As a Roughrider, his story began on May 11, 2015, when he was acquired from Edmonton for veteran Canadian receiver Cory Watson. Edmonton had selected Hus in the fourth round (31st overall) of the 2013 CFL Canadian Draft.
Hus explored NFL options for a couple of years before making his professional three-down football debut in Fort McMurray, Alta., on June 13, 2015. Fort McMurray’s STS Equipment Stadium was the site of an Edmonton home pre-season game against Saskatchewan.
“I remember when we were landing in Fort McMurray, it was nothing but trees and, all of a sudden, a runway popped up,” Hus recalled. “I thought, ‘Where are we going?’
“I just remember (offensive lineman) Brendon LaBatte scaring the (bleep) out of me in the pre-game warmups. He was listening to some music and he was getting fired up. That was my intro to football and I was like, ‘These guys are serious.’ ”
Hus soon unfurled his first snap as a Roughrider — to punter Hugh O’Neill, 4½ minutes into the game.
The regular-season debut took place on June 27, 2015, in the opener against the visiting Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Seven minutes into that contest, Hus launched his first official snap as a Roughrider. Ray Early took it from there, punting the ball 47 yards to begin the Roughriders’ penultimate season on the old Taylor Field site.
Early was the first of eight Roughriders punters to whom Hus snapped the ball in a regular-season game — the others being Josh Bartel, Jon Ryan, Kaare Vedvik, Adam Korsak, Joe Couch, Jesse Mirco and, for part of a game in 2021, Brett Lauther.
Lauther enjoyed the lengthiest tenure among the 11 placekickers with whom Hus worked. The list also includes Early, Chris Milo, Paul McCallum, Tyler Crapigna, Quinn van Gylswyk, Johnny Mark, Gabriel Ferraro, Ryan Meskell, Campbell Fair and Michael Hughes. (Early, ordinarily the punter, attempted a 64-yard field goal in 2015.)
Holders? There were eight: Bartel, Ryan, Vedvik, Korsak, Couch, Mirco and, in Year 1, receivers Weston Dressler and Rob Bagg.
Hus snapped the ball to Bartel, who pinned it for Crapigna to produce a 48-yard field goal against Winnipeg at 9:11 of the opening quarter on July 1, 2017. That troika combined for the first points scored at new Mosaic Stadium.
Beginning with that contest, Hus appeared in 150 consecutive games (including nine playoff contests and one Grey Cup).
Factoring in the entire 10-season run, Hus snapped the football 1,935 times as a Roughrider. Not once did he attempt a snap that was not caught. Nor was there a snap that scraped the turf before reaching the holder or the punter.
Consider that for a moment — nearly 2,000 snaps without a major mishap.
“I had one that wasn’t very good,” Hus noted. “It was high and Bartel had to go up for it. Then he and Brett were lateralling it back and forth all the way to midfield. At the time, it was obviously not funny, but we’ve had some good laughs about it since.
“I think it has actually been deleted from Rider history. It never came up. We were scared to go to meetings on Day 1 after that game. It was just like it had never happened. We were all like, ‘What’s going on?’
“That’s the only one I can think of. There’s obviously a bunch that you want back — ones that you think you could be better on — but I’ve been fortunate. I’ve also had good holders who make you look good, too. I’ve been really lucky that way.”
Hus steps aside after having played in 167 regular-season games — the 27th-most in Roughriders history. Of the 26 players above him on the list, all but two are in the SaskTel Plaza of Honour.
One of the exclusions is O’Day, who would be a shoo-in for induction if not for the fact that he remains an active member of the organization.
“I guess you could say that Jorgen finished his career being perfect, which a lot of people can’t say in their jobs,” O’Day said, alluding to the uncanny successful-snap percentage. “It’s just a tribute to the consistency with which he approached the game.
“He was very consistent in his preparation and well-liked among his teammates. He just came to work every day and did his job — and did it consistently. You could always count on Jorgen.”
O’Day then turned toward someone who was, until Tuesday, the longest-serving active Roughriders player — a distinction now shared by fullback Albert Awachie and receiver Mitch Picton, both of whom joined the team in 2017.
“Jorgen, not too many times can a player end his career on his own terms,” said O’Day, who himself enjoyed such a fitting conclusion when he retired as a player on Feb. 11, 2011.
“It’s pretty awesome that you’re able to do it after winning a Grey Cup. It’s something that they’ll never, ever be able to take from you.”