Epharh Oyama - Stickers, High Fives and Football For Life

Now, I wanna get into your football journey.

You started your football journey with the very organization that you're currently working for, the CDMFA.

So you first played pee wee football with Fort Sask Minor Football, then progressed to high school in Sherwood Park with the Salisbury Sabers.

Can you tell us more about what your experience was like progressing through and playing in the ranks of minor football in the Edmonton area?

Yeah, of course.

Um, it's kind of funny.

It started off as a mistake.

My family moved over here from Nigeria and Australia, and football has always been, you know, soccer.

So when I signed up, my friend told me that he played football.

I was like, "Yeah, of course.

I wanted to join in, too." Came to practice and saw helmets and shoulder pads.

Didn't know what to expect.

But progression's actually been really, really funny thinking about it, 'cause I came into football as a nose tackle and right guard.

So little FF was a little bit of a roly poly holy, [laughs] and he loved, like, loved his role as a big man.

And then as my football journey grew, obviously I grew as a person as well, and then you start hitting puberty.

Oh, um, from being, like, just a nose tackle to being an end, then all of a sudden it was like, oh, now you're a linebacker.

Then my coaches were like, "Oh, [laughs] you're a running back now." [laughs] So it was really funny, 'cause, like, over the little progression of four years of minor football, it switched so much to, like, my last year being like, oh, wow, like...

And everyone always laughs when everyone-- I'm like, "No, I started off as an O lineman.

That's my block.

I promise."

That you had the opportunity as a youth to play multiple positions because I think we see a lot where football players get into one role right away, and then they just stick with that throughout their playing career and don't have the opportunity to branch out.

Do you think that your understanding of the game was really supported by that opportunity?

Yeah, I think so.

It's kind of interesting 'cause you don't really attribute it to that in the moment, but in looking back at it, I think it definitely had a lot of impacts to it because if I did just come in and play running back my whole life, I think I would have a very different outlook on the game In a lot of different ways.

Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, would I have been able to see things a little bit better just being a running back the whole time?" But other times I'm like, when I had to be taught how to pass pro, blocking was something that I had already done.