Alberta boy makes good
By TERRY JONES, EDMONTON SUN
The players call him White Lightning. The coaches call him Dieter. "Nobody has called me by my name around here all year," says Brock Ralph.
Dieter he didn't get. And White Lightning is what he was called in college but figured was a nickname he'd ditched when no one called him that all last year.
"Growing up in Raymond, Alberta I was into CFL football. I'd heard of Dieter Brock. But I never heard of Ralph Brock. I didn't know he was known as Ralph Brock when he came up here and then started going by Dieter Brock a little bit later."
You'll hear it again and again with veteran broadcasters getting Brock Ralph and Ralph Brock mixed up.
"When the coaches kept calling me Dieter, I finally went up to them and asked. 'Why am I Dieter?' That's when they explained it to me."
As for 'White Lightning', Brock is similarly clueless.
"I'm not even sure who gave it to me. I don't know where it came from or who thought it up," said the receiver who gets the part it's because he's fast and white.
"It started at the University of Wyoming. I thought I'd heard the last of it. It didn't follow me up here last year. I just started to hear it the end of training camp. I guess one of the players ran into somebody who knew me in college. But as far as I know there are no contacts on this team with people I played with at Wyoming."
Call him whatever you will, you have to call Brock Ralph the story of the season in many ways for the defending Grey Cup champion Eskimos.
Half way through the schedule, Ralph is second in receiving statistics. He's caught 33 passes for 439 yards, an average of 13.3 per reception and has another touchdown.
As a young Canadian talent in the mix with the likes of Terry Vaughn, Ed Hervey, Jason Tucker and Derrell Mitchell, you don't expect to turn the corner on your second season as a pro as the No. 2 receiver on the team statistically.
"No," says Ralph, "You sure don't.
"For me in camp, I had my goals set. One of those goals was to secure a spot with the starting five. It was a goal I set for myself last year when I got hurt."
Now they're calling it the Fab Five instead of the Fab Four.
"It's been a great opportunity for me. I really am just happy I've had the chance to get on the field. I also feel pretty lucky to be the understudy of four of definitely the better receivers in the league.
"I'm still learning. I'm still a young guy. I study the film and watch the other guys. I work with them. I try feed off them."
Ralph's 2003 season was cut short to seven games due to a broken collarbone. He wasn't able to return for the Grey Cup game. Most of his time was spent on special teams. He had virtually no statistics to show for the season. He caught two passes for 20 yards. One of them, however, was for a touchdown.
"It was such a different mindset going into camp and into the season last year and this year. Coming back to Canada and Canadian football, everything was new to me again up here.
"And just as I started getting into my role, the injury happened. It was very frustrating end to the season after the seventh game. I was starting to have such a fun."
It also meant being a largely disconnected member of a Grey Cup winning team.
"I was there in Regina. It was definitely a thrill. But I'm careful how I say it because it can be taken wrong. But I was disappointed watching it on the sideline. The combination of how great it was and how disappointing it was not to be an on-the-field part of it definitely makes me want to get back to the Grey Cup in the near future."
He got a Grey Cup ring out of the deal.
"It makes my little hands look even smaller," he laughed.
"I wear it for special occasions. But I'm sure it means a lot more to some of the other players than it does to me. I think when you are on any team which wins a championship the bigger your roll is, the more it means.
"The other players all told me 'You're part of it.' And I did feel part of last year's team. And really, I was grateful to be part of it. But if I could get to a Grey Cup game and maybe catch a couple of balls ...
"The second one might mean more. But I'm really careful about anybody getting the idea of not appreciating it. Lloyd Fairbanks played something like 16 years in the league and never saw a Grey Cup ring."
Lloyd Fairbanks is the guy Brock Ralph replaced as the pride of Raymond. And Fairbanks has more than a little to do with the development of this bright, young kid with star quality and likability.
"Lloyd Fairbanks coached me for a couple years high school and had the contacts and credibility to get a couple of schools down there to have a look at me. He's been a big, big part of things for me. I owe Lloyd.
He's been pretty neat."Raymond itself played its part. It's a special town.
"There was a sports tradition there before I knew what sports were. My dad coached high school basketball. Raymond produced a lot of good high school basketball players. The Tollestrups are mentioned by a lot of people. My dad coached some of them.
"I grew up living sports and following teams around. Sports do occupy a lot of the personality of the place.
"Raymond has a population of 4,000. It always sounds smaller when you say it than when you grew up in it. When I grew up there it didn't seem that small. When I go back, it does a bit now.
"It's different being a kid in a town like that. Part of it is a lack of things to do. You don't grow up hanging around the mall like maybe some city kids can do. If you're a guy who hits the age group, they'll school you up on something because you need most everybody to make up the teams.
"When you and your buddies grow up in elementary and junior high school, you start throwing the football around with a dream of being a Comet."
The Comets are a high school football legend in Alberta. And there were no better years than when Brock Ralph played there.
In his junior and senior years he was named the league's most valuable player as he helped his team to a 25-1 record and consecutive provincial titles.
With his dad being the basketball coach, you'd think maybe he'd have gone the basketball route.
"I did play basketball through senior year. Dad helped coach the football and baseball teams too. I played just about everything in season. There weren't any days off from practice for one sport or another."
As a senior at Raymond High School, Brock was the provincial champion in the 100-metres and triple jump.
Combine Lloyd Fairbanks with his dad and the town and you only have part of what produces a player like Brock Ralph. There are also his brothers.
"I have three brothers. Dustin is my older brother and Brett is younger brother. I was between those two. Both are going to the University of Alberta and are going to play with the Golden Bears. All three of us played together at the University of Wyoming. I was the first one to go there and the last one to leave. Dustin came up here and Brett went to Boise State. Dustin returned and went to school in Lethbridge last year so he's eligible to play for the Bears this year. Brett has to sit out this year because of the transfer rule.
"A lot keeps going back to my family and playing with my two brothers, my dad hitting ground balls back yard having contests doing left handed layups. I was the guy trying to keep pace both my brothers, even the one younger than me. It took me longer get polished. I was usually first guy eliminated in the games we played."
His third brother, Jimmy, is in Grade 6.
Ralph went to Wyoming because he felt the school and the team was a good fit.
"I only had a handful of schools to choose from and I had to sell myself. I sent some film around and eventually it came down to Wyoming or Washington State."
He decided against Hugh Campbell's alma mater and went to Wyoming.
"I enjoyed my years down in Wyoming. I red shirted my first year and started my last three years," he said.
Heck, he was White Lightning.
Originally drafted 13th overall in the 2002 Canadian college draft, the Eskimos traded away their 17th selection a year later to get him.
"Getting drafted by the CFL sort of snuck up on me. I had another year to go and wanted to finish up university. One day I got a phone call and it was my mom telling me I'd been drafted by Ottawa. I had no idea what she was talking about."
Last year he was getting ready to load up the car and drive to Ottawa when the Eskimos called and told him they'd made a deal and he'd have a shorter trip to his first training camp.
"I was definitely happy. This is close to where I grew up. I was definitely happy to be back out West. The Eskimos had so much of the tradition I saw growing up."
He didn't say he was an Eskimo fan, mind you.
"I was a Calgary Stampeders fan. Lloyd Fairbanks played for the Stamps. If I wasn't a fan before he went there I was after. That's how Raymond is."
There's probably some sort of rule that if they go to the track they even have to bet on his horses.
He has two running at Northlands and Stampede Park this year, Wintuition and Wildly Ruth.
"I grew up in a family which for three generations have owned and raised thoroughbred race horses," he said. "I grew up around the track a little bit."
There also seems to be a rule that everybody in Raymond has to go watch Ralph play on Labour Day.
"My mom and dad come up to Edmonton for every game," he said of Jim and Shirley.
"And for Labour Day in Calgary I had to put aside 32 tickets. I had 20 tickets for the Saskatchewan game last weekend."
