In pursuit of… “normal”

By Arash Madani, Special to CW

It had been nearly a year of waiting to feel what football has to offer. For weeks, he couldn’t put any weight on his right foot. Eventually the cast he was in gave way to a walking boot. Crutches finally were discarded, but there was still a limp. Weight room sessions were limited to only upper body workouts. Anything on-field was away from helmets and pads, away from the team, away from the game. And away from the action that one of the best tailbacks in the country so desperately craves.

And so a couple of weeks back, when the green light was given to fully go in practice – like, without restriction to let it fly – barreling downhill came Marshall Erichsen. Finding open space with the football, just like old times before the mess of the longest off-season ever, Erichsen bulldozed into senior defensive back Cedric McCallum. The force was significant. Collisions like those don’t often happen mid-week against your own teammate.

“I hit him harder than I should,” Erichsen sheepishly admitted a few days later. “But I needed to feel that contact again.”

Just shy of eleven months since tearing his Achilles in a playoff game against Manitoba, Erichsen will no longer require friendly fire to receive and deliver a hit. The Regina Rams MVP from last season – who re-wrote the school’s record books, who finished the year as a first-team All-Canadian and who accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the team’s offence – has, at last been cleared to play after the catastrophic injury and the never-ending rehab that followed post-op.

This afternoon at 2 p.m. local time, Erichsen will lead the Rams onto the field at Mosaic Stadium to face their rival Saskatchewan Huskies. A rematch of last year’s Hardy Cup that Erichsen could only helplessly watch as a spectator, a week after the injury and four days after surgery. The Huskies, thanks to 16 unanswered points in the fourth quarter, won last November’s Canada West title game 25-24 and went on to play in the Vanier Cup.

All the while in Regina, with the Rams having gone 6-2 in the regular season and posting their best record in a decade, many wondered how different it may have been if Erichsen was healthy and could have played.

“When he was rolling, we were rolling. Not just as an offense, as a team,” says Mark McConkey, the Rams head coach. “He’s such a big-time player for us. He brings those explosive plays for us. It looks like a run may be going for four yards, and the next thing you know, he bounces out for 40 more.”

So that Erichsen’s comeback after all this time is against the Huskies, on home field? It makes it even more sweet.

“It’s been a long journey,” Erichsen says. “Part of me is itching to come back. Part of me is shocked I can finally play.”

***

It was an angle route over the middle of the field. Nothing complicated.

The Rams and Bisons were in the midst of a terrific playoff duel under the lights on a Saturday night, one that ultimately was settled with a wild 32-29 Regina win in double OT last Nov. 1. To open the game, Erichsen had set the tone with a 30-yard touchdown run and then back-and-forth it went.

It was during that shootout when the call came in for a throw, and Erichsen – such a pivotal part of the Rams passing game – went to work. If he’d run that angle route once, he’d executed it a thousand times without issue. As usual, he went just past the second level, planted his first step out of the break and then heard a huge pop.

“I looked around and nobody was around me,” Erichsen said. “That’s when I knew something was wrong.”

His right Achilles had been shredded and he was in the operating room on Tuesday. The next three months were excruciating for an elite athlete wanting to compete.

“I couldn’t do much,” he said. ​

After three weeks in a cast, he hobbled around in a boot with a heel lift for four weeks. It wasn’t until January that Erichsen progressed to body weight activities and a few squats. But none of this was actual football.

“When did it feel normal?” he was asked.

“Normal is a tricky question,” he replied.

It wasn’t normal for most of the summer. While the Rams were running and lifting as a team, Erichsen would show up – but physically couldn’t do what the rest of the group was doing. He was always off to the side, doing different one-on-one drills and rehab exercises either with Erin Dupuis, then the assistant athletic therapist with the Rams, or Nicole Elkington, the university’s head trainer.

What killed Erichsen was feeling as if he wasn’t “fully engaged” with the team, even being so close to them.

Dupuis and Erichsen were in lockstep to get on-field work in at night when the team cleared out, and he had finished working at his off-season job.

“I was trying to stay my course,” he said.

When training camp began on Aug. 14, he was determined to be ready for opening day. “I told myself, ‘You’re going to be ready to rumble,’” he said.

That made him work harder in July and early August, but the Achilles wasn’t ready by the start of camp, nor at the end. It’s one thing to run and cut alone on a field by yourself, it’s another to go full speed with pads on and a defense waiting for you.

“We’ve been trying to be smart with him,” says McConkey. “And to make sure he has the endurance.”

Over and over, the coaches and the training staff repeatedly told Erichsen he couldn’t rush the return. It’s taken longer to return than he’d hoped. The recovery hasn’t been a linear path. In mid-August, during the first week of camp, he overworked it and then needed four days off. Load management in practices was a real thing – doing every third rep of individual drills; going hard for 15 minutes, then taking a 25 or 30-minute rest before ramping it back up again.

“You just have to figure out that balance,” Erichsen said.

It was just the other day that normalcy finally arrived for Erichsen. It was in practice and his number was called. The ball went to him, he cut in open space, then planted and made another jump cut before being off to the races.

“The team just came alive,” McConkey said.

“He’s back,” yelled some Rams players.

Today, it’s official. Regina’s best player is, indeed, back. To play against a provincial rival. For a stake of first place at the mid-way point of the Canada West regular season. A year after rushing for a Canada West-best 1,026 yards and 11 touchdowns, both new school records, the game being taken away from Marshall Erichsen has also given him a newfound perspective as he gets set to suit up again as a senior.

“I’ve had so many goals for my football career, but through this process I’ve learned those individual goals don’t matter,” Erichsen says. “Whatever I can do to help our team to have more success to win a game is what I’m excited (for). No personal goals. No expectations. I know I’m a good football player and I want to help my team in any way I can.”

Fans can watch Erichsen and the Regina Rams take on rival Saskatchewan today at 2 p.m. CST, streaming on BioSteel Canada West TV or SaskTel maxTV Ch. 48 & 49.

About the Author

Well known to sports fans across Canada, Arash Madani is a national sports broadcaster who has travelled the world covering some of the biggest events in sport. Canada West is proud to welcome Arash as a contributor to its football coverage team for the 2026 season.

About Canada West:

Canada West has been Building Champions Since 1919. As the leading university athletic conference in the country, Canada West is home to student-athletes that excel in the classroom and their communities. The conference is comprised of 18 member institutions spanning from Victoria to Winnipeg, with over 3,200 student-athletes competing across 14 sports. Canada West’s mission is to train leaders and build champions by providing leadership in the delivery, regulation, and promotion of university level high performance sports programs throughout western Canada.