From Cabri, West used his athleticism to eventually claim a spot on the Riders, first joining the team in 1962. He contributed on defence, offence and special teams.<\/p>\n
West was mostly a wide receiver for his first season and a bit with the Roughriders before moving to safety. He was also the team\u2019s emergency punter.<\/p>\n
West caught the game-winning touchdown in 1963 against the Edmonton Eskimos. That was significant, as quarterback Ron Lancaster led a 109-yard drive to win the game, despite the fact he still hadn\u2019t been named the team\u2019s starting field general.<\/p>\n
\u201cRonnie and (head coach) Bob Shaw didn\u2019t get along real well to the point Ron never went on any road trips; he was left at home for the first go up until that game basically and it was a home game. It was an interesting conflict. Bob Shaw never liked anyone who was more popular than he was,\u201d West said in a 2020 interview.<\/p>\n
But with Lancaster staking his claim as the starter and running back George Reed turning into a perennial all-star, the fortune of the Roughriders began to change. It all led to the 1966 Grey Cup in Toronto against the Ottawa Rough Riders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was really, really exciting. I don\u2019t think everybody realized exactly how big a game that was. We didn\u2019t go in there thinking, \u2018You know, the Riders have never won a Grey Cup; maybe we could win one.\u2019 It wasn\u2019t like that at all,\u201d West said.<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan won 29-14 to claim the franchise\u2019s first CFL title.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe supposedly didn\u2019t have a chance to win the game. Ottawa was the be-all and end-all at that particular time and they didn\u2019t even have cameras for our dressing room for after the game. The cameras were over in the Ottawa dressing room because they were convinced that Ottawa would win the Grey Cup,\u201d said West, who had an interception in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe homecoming was outstanding. We were loaded up on the bus and went to the armouries and there was thousands of people there. As a number of us have mentioned, we never had to buy a drink for a month.\u201d<\/p>\n
West was a graduate of the University of Regina after attending the University of Arizona and the University of Saskatchewan on a football scholarship. He went on to play with the Riders for seven seasons.<\/p>\n
He was named the CFL West Division\u2019s Most Outstanding Canadian in 1963.<\/p>\n
West was named a Western all-star three times in his CFL career, during which he caught 18 passes for 480 yards and six touchdowns and intercepted 17 passes for 265 yards and a TD.<\/p>\n
He was inducted into the Roughriders\u2019 Plaza of Honour in 1997. He was also\u00a0enshrined in the Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame (1988) and Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame (1989).<\/p>\n
He retired from the Roughriders in 1968 and he spent the next 31 years as a teacher in Regina. He eventually became a vice-principal. Following his retirement from that, West served as a trustee on the Regina Public School Board for three terms.<\/p>\n
He was also the program co-ordinator for the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Cabri, West used his athleticism to eventually claim a spot on the Riders, first joining the team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-682024","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\/682024","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=682024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}