Many football players dream of playing in the Labour Day Classic. For Weyburn's Brendon LaBatta, he had the opportunity to play in this game as a member of both the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Winnipeg Blue Bombers—an opportunity that he didn't foresee growing up.
"I was hockey, baseball, and we took our baseball pretty serious down in Weyburn," Labatt said. "Then I played my grade 12 final game when we lost, and I never even thought about playing football again. Then Frank McCrystal reached out to me, and it would have been towards the end of February, and he's like, 'You want to come to the U of R and play with the Rams?' At that point, I had three junior teams that were interested in wanting me to go out and play, and Frank was the only university team that had reached out. So yeah, sure, I'll come. Well, what do you want to take? And I was like, maybe I'll do education. He's like, 'Well, you got to have this big long essay typed up by March 1st or something.' And I was like, well, that's not gonna happen
Labatte would then spend his first year at the University of Regina redshirting.
“It turned out to be great, and that's kind of when it clicked that, you know, if I can just keep doing what the coaches are asking and show up and give it my all, that maybe I can play this game a little longer than just college."
The Riders and Bombers square off on Sunday at a sold-out Mosaic Stadium.
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