By Jon Roe
There are no hard feelings about how the Erik Glavic situation played out, says Saint Mary’s University’s football coach, Steve Sumarah.
“Anytime anybody leaves your program, it’s always a surprise,” he says. “People do what they do because they think it’s the best for them, right? I’m assuming from both a personal and an academic situation, Erik felt that was best for him.”
Glavic announced he was transferring to the University of Calgary to begin classes immediately in January after a season on the sidelines with the Huskies. He had reinjured his knee in the opening game of the 2008 season. In 2007, he had led the Huskies to a berth in the national finals in his first season as the starting quarterback, but could not take part in the Vanier Cup game because of a torn ACL suffered in the national semi-finals. The Huskies lost to the Western University Mustangs, 28-12, and Glavic was named the Hec Crighton Award winner as the most valuable player in Canadian Interuniversity Sport.
Dinos head coach Blake Nill, then the head coach of the Huskies, recruited Glavic for the 2005 season before leaving the program to take the reins of the Dinos in 2006.
Sumarah was the offensive coordinator under Nill while he led SMU to six consecutive Atlantic University Sport championships from 1999 to 2004 and two Vanier Cup championships in 2001 and 2002.
However, despite the obvious storyline, Sumarah doesn’t see this as a game of himself versus Nill. It’s the Huskies against the Dinos.
“I don’t consider it me versus Blake,” he says. “The good thing is neither one of us has to put the gear on and go out on the field.”
The Glavic storyline provides one more interesting wrinkle, though. After playing for the Huskies for parts of four seasons, Glavic knows the offensive playbook inside and out. But that also means the Huskies know Glavic’s tendencies. Regardless, Sumarah believes it all comes down to what happens on the field.
“Having coached him, yeah, we might have a few things here and there, but I think the reality is we just have to do what we do best,” Sumarah says.