Anton Amundrud, the sleek version, patrols Griffiths Stadium this week with fleeter feet than last year and a few memories to expunge.
The University of Saskatchewan Huskies’ starting quarterback dropped around 10 pounds during the off-season while changing a few training elements.
“This is the best I’ve ever felt coming into a season,” he said this week while preparing for Thursday’s 7 p.m. pre-season football home game against the Alberta Golden Bears.
“There’s certain diet things, training things I don’t usually do. I focused on that, and on losing a couple pounds so I can be a little quicker. I feel better, honestly, on my feet.”
Huskies’ head coach Scott Flory has noticed that effort from his QB, who took over as starter last season after all-Canadian Mason Nyhus graduated out of the program.
Flory calls him “our clear, undisputed No. 1 guy.”
Amundrud completed 187 of 300 passes during eight regular-season contests and one playoff game last season — more on that latter outing a little further down — while throwing for 2,457 yards, 14 touchdowns and 18 interceptions. He was second in conference passing yards and touchdowns, and first in interceptions.
“I learned a lot last year,” he said. “I got some stuff under my belt. I learned a lot from certain mistakes, and from things we did well.”
Added Flory: “I’ve been really happy with Anton through the off-season. We had, with Mason Nyhus, a very good all-Canadian quarterback. When you lose an influential player like that, there can be a bit of a wake behind the boat.
“(Amundrud) is taking a bigger leadership role, and he’s taking care of himself. He’s lost 10 pounds, and you can tell. He’s having a great camp, he knows our offence, and his comfort level increases snap by snap. He’s our clear, undisputed No. 1 guy and he’s getting better each and every snap.”
The Huskies are coming off an up, then down, 2023. They started with a 4-1 record, then lost three of their last four games, including a 40-17 loss to the Alberta Golden Bears in a first-round playoff match.
That early ouster came after the team had reached the previous two Vanier Cups.
“For me, philosophically … bad game, bad season, all that stuff — you’ve got to learn from it,” Flory said when asked if it’s better to remember, or to forget, a campaign like that. “It’s not something from the Men in Black, where we erase it from our memory. It happened, let’s not forget that it happened, and let’s learn from it and move forward.”
The same Golden Bears who thumped the Huskies in that playoff match are at Griffiths Stadium on Thursday. The teams played three times last season, with Alberta winning all of them.
Flory says starters and those who are starter-adjacent will get the bulk of time in the first half, and they’ll evaluate the rest of the roster over the final two quarters.
“Not that we don’t want to win, but that’s not the focus,” Flory said. “We want to make sure we’re executing, working our bench management, working our substitutions, and getting snaps for a lot of the young guys who are the future of this program.
“It’s so different in practice. When you go game-speed … it’s just different. There’s a crowd, and it’s for real. You get to prepare for an opponent, instead of yourself, and that’s good.”
The Huskies open their Canada West regular season Aug. 31 on the road against the Manitoba Bisons, and they’ll play in Regina Sept. 6 before playing their home opener Sept. 13 against the Calgary Dinos.
“I think it’s important to remember the things that weren’t done well, so you don’t do that again,” Amundrud said. “You can learn from those scars. So far, since coming into training camp, our team’s done a really good job of that — of learning from what didn’t work last year. We’ve come in running.”
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