Sam La Roue is getting another chance to be a football player.<\/p>\n
The six-foot-four, 220-pound receiver figured he was done in the sport after the Western Mustangs lost 51-31 to Wilfrid Laurier in the 2024 Yates Cup. But on Friday, La Roue, currently a defenceman with the National Lacrosse League\u2019s Halifax Thunderbirds, will don the pads again at the CFL\u2019s invitational combine.<\/p>\n
\u201cTowards my last season at Western, I realized it (football) was probably going to be over and I\u2019d kind of come to terms with that,\u201d La Roue said Tuesday. \u201cBut that last game against Laurier was a bit of a struggle for me in terms of wrapping my head around that was going to be my last experience playing football.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to have another opportunity to put the pads on again and go compete on the football field.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Roue, 23, of South Surrey, B.C., will be among 80 players at the University of Waterloo\u2019s Feridun Hamdullahpur Field House chasing a spot in the CFL\u2019s national combine March 27-29 in Edmonton. Last year, 11 invitational players were selected for the national event.<\/p>\n
On Friday, participants will be tested in the 225-pound bench press, vertical jump, broad jump, 40-yard dash, three-cone and short shuttle. They\u2019ll also don pads for positional work and one-on-one drills before representatives of all nine CFL teams.<\/p>\n
La Roue isn\u2019t going into the combine with specific results or numbers in mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day I\u2019d just like to show my athletic ability,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, I probably won\u2019t be in the same spot as a guy who\u2019s had a full off-season of football training \u2026 but we\u2019re in season now for lacrosse so I\u2019ve been in an in-season workout routine over the past four, five months.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Roue enrolled at Western in 2020 but that season was cancelled due to the global pandemic. He played for the Mustangs from 2021-24, first as a quarterback before switching to receiver while also playing special teams. <\/p>\n
During his time in London, Ont., La Roue was part of a Vanier Cup-winning team (2021) and two Yates Cup champions (2022-23). But he learned to juggle more than just football and academics while at Western.<\/p>\n
La Roue was selected in the second round, No. 19 overall, of the \u201920 NLL draft by the Buffalo Bandits. He spent three-plus years with Buffalo (2021-24, playing on championship teams in 2022-23), then was dealt to the Ottawa Black Bears (2024-26) before Halifax signed La Roue to the practice player list last month.<\/p>\n
La Roue has appeared in 15 career NLL games, registering five assists and 22 loose balls.<\/p>\n
Although La Roue has been away from football since 2024, he said similarities exist between it and lacrosse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are parallels regarding how you move your feet and body and play defence in lacrosse to being in a blocking position in football,\u201d he said. \u201cI think why I was successful playing special teams \u2014 especially the return game \u2014 and blocking as a receiver (at Western), a lot of that was due to the skill I developed playing defence in lacrosse and being able to take away angles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Five seasons of pro lacrosse have also taught La Roue some valuable lessons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in a professional locker room for the past five years,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve kind of developed that maturity aspect from being around men who have kids versus a college locker room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been able to kind of develop what a rookie would typically go through \u2026 I\u2019ve been able to work out those kinks, if you will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Playing pro lacrosse is a grind. The overwhelming majority of players work full-time during the week and either practise early to mid-week or each Friday after flying to the city where they\u2019re slated to play the following day.<\/p>\n
Then after each game, they return home to resume their work week. For La Roue, that means heading back to Toronto where he works as an associate at a financial advisory firm.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a grind but it\u2019s a great sport,\u201d he said. \u201cI do think (lacrosse) will gain some traction in the future because it\u2019s such an entertaining game to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Roue is eligible for the \u201926 CFL draft on April 28, but isn\u2019t thinking that far ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I\u2019m honestly just taking this as an opportunity to put the pads on again and compete as a football player,\u201d he said \u201cGetting drafted would be awesome and going to a camp would be great, I\u2019d love that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m not focusing on that, just more on what we\u2019ll have going on Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 3, 2026.<\/p>\n
Dan Ralph, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam La Roue is getting another chance to be a football player. The six-foot-four, 220-pound receiver figured he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-512666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}