receiver Hugh Campbell<\/a> were also part of the WSU connection.<\/p>\n\u201cGarner was a lifelong Coug and Rider,\u201d said Ekstran\u2019s grandson, Iver Light. \u201cHe loved to tell amazing stories of his playing days and of all the people who made Saskatchewan a special place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Roughrider organization meant a lot to Garner and especially his wife Marge, who built strong friendships in the players\u2019 wives circle.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Washington State tie was Ekstran\u2019s ticket to Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n
College teammate Ron Green, a two-way lineman with the Cougars, signed with Saskatchewan on Jan. 20, 1961. Shortly thereafter, Green asked Ekstran what he had planned for the 1961 football season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI gave him a couple of ideas and he said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you go to Saskatchewan with me? We\u2019ll play one year and then leave. We\u2019ll go back to the NFL,\u2019 \u2019\u2019 Ekstran said in 2006. \u201cIt sounded like a good deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ekstran signed with the Roughriders on March 10, 1961, beginning a seven-season stay in Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have paid to play,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was just a great environment. I loved it \u2014 and I don\u2019t know of anybody who didn\u2019t. It was just a great bunch of guys. We had fun and when it was time to play the game, we played.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a rookie in 1961, he was named the Roughriders\u2019 Most Outstanding Lineman. He also received that honour in 1963.<\/p>\n
He earned All-CFL recognition in 1962, 1963 and 1967. As well, he made the Western Conference\u2019s dream team in 1966.<\/p>\n
Ekstran\u2019s listed weight (225 pounds) was often an exaggeration. But heart, desire and ability more than compensated for a lack of size, relative to the giants who lined up opposite him.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the time that I was eight or 10 years old, I told everybody whether they asked or not that I was going to play pro ball,\u201d the 6-foot-0 Ekstran said. \u201cThey all laughed at me, of course. I went into high school in the ninth grade at 5-foot-4 and 95 pounds. But I wore a Size 12 shoe, so I knew I was going to grow into something.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Roughriders legend, in fact.<\/p>\n
\u201cGarner\u00a0Ekstran was only about 210 or 215,\u201d linebacker Wayne Shaw recalled. \u201cIf he wasn\u2019t down real low, he had no hope, but he was strong like a bull.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just the way it was from working on the farm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ekstran\u2019s teammates were well aware of the agricultural background.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s sitting around upstairs at the exhibition grounds and in comes\u00a0Garner,\u201d said 1992 Plaza of Honour inductee Alan Ford, flashing back to 1965 and his first CFL training camp. \u201cA lot of the veterans are there, and they start making sounds like a cow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew that this guy had a lot of respect from everybody in the room. When he walked in, it was, \u2018Moo!\u2019 He\u2019d show up on the road, walking through the airport, and invariably someone would go, \u2018Moo!\u2019 And you just knew\u00a0Garner\u00a0was there.\u201d<\/p>\n
His presence was even more notable on the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cGarner\u2019s trademark was his clothesline,\u201d Ford said. \u201cHe and (Canadian Football Hall of Fame defensive lineman) Bill Baker probably had the two best clotheslines that I\u2019ve ever experienced.<\/p>\n
\u201cGarner\u00a0did that to me about three days into my rookie training camp. I\u2019m a running back coming out of the backfield and thinking, \u2018This is easy. I\u2019m going to run a 10-yard out.\u2019 I got about six yards and, all of a sudden, I\u2019m on my back. I\u2019d never experienced that before. I knew I had to get up and get back to the huddle because you didn\u2019t want to be hurt with an Eagle Keys team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next time I came out and (Ekstran) said, \u2018Hey, rookie, you take a pretty good clothesline,\u2019 then I knew that maybe I was OK with the veterans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure I left teeth-prints on his forearm. Mine were a long list of teeth that hit his forearm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ford was among four Roughriders players who scored a touchdown in the 1966 Grey Cup Game. Campbell and Reed accounted for the Washington State presence in the end zone at Vancouver\u2019s Empire Stadium.<\/p>\n
Ron Lancaster\u2019s five-yard touchdown pass to Campbell proved to be the game-winner. Campbell snapped a 14-14 tie on the opening play of the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Ekstran set the table. Ottawa was backed up to its three-yard line when he felled running back Jim Dillard for a loss of one on first down. Two plays later, Bill Cline punted from his team\u2019s end zone. A 10-yard punt return by Gene Wlasiuk gave Saskatchewan a first down on Ottawa\u2019s 32-yard line.<\/p>\n
Three runs by Reed, an offside penalty against Ottawa, and a 10-yard completion to Campbell preceded Gluey Hughie\u2019s go-ahead TD.<\/p>\n
The next season, Ekstran moved to outside linebacker and earned All-CFL recognition for the third time. His array of skills was such that he also saw some duty at tight end, catching five passes for 75 yards over his career.<\/p>\n
Regardless of the position or the assignment, the mindset was the same: \u201cBeat the guy across from you until he doesn\u2019t want to hit you anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Intense and indestructible, Ekstran played in 110 of a possible 112 regular-season games as a Roughrider. He also appeared in 16 post-season contests, including the Grey Cups of 1966 and 1967.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter his time in Regina, he came back home to Bow, Washington, where he was a dairyman,\u201d Light said. \u201cBoth his community and job were core parts of his identity. He was surrounded by his family and friends until the very end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garner and Marge Ekstran were married 62 years. Born just two days after Garner in June of 1939, Marge passed away on Dec. 28, 2023.<\/a><\/p>\nThe Ekstrans are survived by three children (Kristen, Kara and Keith) and two grandchildren (Iver and Elsie Light). Garner is also survived by his sister (Diane Lind).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garner Ekstran, a 1990 inductee into the Saskatchewan Roughriders\u2019 Plaza of Honour, passed away of natural causes on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-586762","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\/586762","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=586762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}