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Adam Rittenberg
Almost all in Elic Ayomanor’s life remember where they were on October 13, 2023.
The open receiver of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, now a Draft prospect of the NFL, had waited more than a year for its advance in Stanford. That night, he would face Colorado and Travis Hunter, the bidirectional star that would win the Heisman trophy the following season.
In the part-time, Stanford continued 29-0 and Ayomanor had zero receptions. So something magical happened. After Stanford arrived at the board and forced a colored clearance, Ayomanor caught a quick route, cut the field and ran 97 yards for a touchdown. After another Colorado clearance, Ayomanor caught a rear shoulder pass in front of a baffled hunter and cut in the field for a 60 -yard score.
The ball was still going to Ayomanor, and Stanford kept scoring. The Cardinal sent the game on extra time, then extended it after the 30 yards of Ayomanor. Stanford prevailed 46-43 in the second extra half, completing the greatest return in the history of the team.
Ayomanor Final Statistics Line: 13 receptions, 294 yards, three touchdowns. He established a record of reception of a single Stanford game and reached 51 yards of the PAC-12 brand.
“I remember being really tired of altitude,” Ayomanor told ESPN. “As, after each play, I return to the bank and I am like, ‘Where is oxygen? Whoever has oxygen, let me know right now, because I need it'”.
The performance reached the group of people who helped Ayomanor reach the great stage.
Kwame Osei, who helped train Ayomanor in Canada, saw the game from a bar at Las Vegas airport.
“I literally got up, I’m screaming, I’m cheering,” Osei said. “I was full of joy. I had tears in my eyes, just because I knew this is the time, this is the time that will prepare it for the next stage.”
Justin Dillon, the explorer who had helped to recruit Ayomanor to the United States, observed in an Ontario bar that stuck to an American university football game.
“Most of these people did not understand,” Dillon said. “I kept saying: ‘He is doing this against [who] They say he is the best athlete in the NCAA ‘”.
This was the culmination of an odyssey that began in a place where hockey governs. He continued with Canadian teams All-Star and the preparation schools in New Jersey and Massachusetts and, finally, Stanford.
Canada has produced NFL players before. Thirty Canada players appeared in a NFL game last season. The recent Draft teams include John Metchie III, Chase and Sydney Brown, Chuba Hubbard, Jevon Holland and Chase Claypool. In the Canadian Football League, Doug Flaute won MVP of the League several times and turned it into a race in the NFL. But those around Ayomanor, a potential selection of day 2 next month, think he has the opportunity to be special, and help pave the way for those who take it.
“Elic can be the face of football in Canada,” Dillon said.
Although Ayomanor’s mother, Pam Weiterman, did not pushing her children to sports, encouraged them, with a warning: if you start an activity, you must finish it. Elic cried his first time in hockey because he hated skating. He changed football at age 13 and hooked.
OSEI, a former CFL player who has trained at multiple levels in Canada, listened for the first time about Ayomanor while training receptors for the sub-16 Alberta soccer team in 2018. When he arrived in Edmonton to train, everyone was buzzing about the Medicine Hat receiver.
“I immediately saw that he was a player,” Osei said. “It was faster than the other children, had soft hands, jumped from the gym. It simply looked like the paper.”
Ayomanor’s Inquisition convinced OSEI that he could have a different type of trajectory.
“Everything I taught him, he really soaked and just asked the next question,” Osei said. “… what establishes the good of the great apparent is the appetite to learn more.”
Ayomanor shone as the Alberta team won the Western Challenge, a competition against teams from other provinces, scoring three touchdowns in the third quarter of the championship against Manitoba. OSEI put Ayomanor aside later, and Ayomanor told him that he wanted to play at the NFL. When OSEI told Ayomanor that it could mean ending high school in the United States to generate recruitment care, the 15 -year -old did not shudder.
“Our country is hockey,” Dillon said. “The best soccer players play in the United States, and have schools that are good academic schools that will facilitate international children. So why are we not using this to help and facilitate that the schools of the NCAA will recruit it?”
Weiterman knew nothing about the road to the important American university football or the NFL. OSEI contacted Dillon, whose 730 exploration service helps place the best Canadian players with US secondary schools. A week after Western Challenge, Dillon called Weiterman and made his case.
The opposite argument occurred through a “six -page email” that Weiterman received from the members of the Alberta football community that describes why Ayomanor should stay in Canada. The promising Canadian players had moved directly from their country of origin to the main university programs.
“I have been saying for years that I think outside the box,” Weiterman said by allowing his son to go to the United States “no father wants to miss the years of his children’s life, but he will sacrifice him if it is for the improvement of that child. He wants his dreams to follow.”
In 2019, Ayomanor, 16, enrolled in the Peddie school in New Jersey, where Metchie played. Ayomanor played the first half of his second season before breaking his clavicle. After a training change, Deerfield Academy was transferred in western Massachusetts, another preparatory school. Then, Covid-19 deleted his Junior season.
However, he did not let time waste. He tried to dominate each receiver place, even training with a 5 -foot 8 -foot partner 8.
“That is extremely unusual for a high school child to lean and say: ‘I want to do things, maybe I’m not so good at this time,” said Deerfield’s coach Brian Barbato. “Not only will you sit there and catch deep balls because that is what is best. It was a sponge.”
Ayomanor was ready to play in 2021, but suffered a knee injury that ended the season in Deerfield’s second game. His American football odyssey had thrown nine games for three years.
“I had to go to some camps and publish some practice films,” he said. “It was fun. I love to compete, so I was super happy and anxious to go where I had to go to compete and demonstrate my worth.”
Although Ayomanor lacked a game movie, he had a training video where he looked part of a Power 4 recruit.
Ayomanor had more than 20 offers at the end of the spring of 2021, but wanted to know about the school of his dreams: Stanford. Dillon approached Bobby Kennedy, then Stanford’s open receiver coach, who had trained Tevaun Smith, another of Dillon’s Canadian perspectives, while he was in Iowa. Kennedy said he began to dig in Ayomanor’s history and liked what he saw, even with a limited film.
Kennedy wanted to extend an offer, but the then Stanford coach, David Shaw, required Ayomanor to attend the team camp. Kennedy worried about whether a player with Notre Dame, Tennessee and others would like to do so.
“He goes ‘coach, I will come to the camp. If that’s what I need to get a scholarship in Stanford, then I will'” Kennedy recalled.
About 10 minutes from Ayomanor’s training in Stanford, Shaw approached Kennedy with the Green Light scholarship.
His trip from the medical hat to the important university football was complete, but the wait to show his talents would continue. He reduced his first season in 2022 after shaking his meniscus, and began the fall of 2023 practicing with an orthopedic device in the knee.
The week of the Colorado game would come out.
Weiterman usually observes the Ayomanor games alone. She becomes too worked.
In the part -time of the Colorado game, he began to prepare for the bed. She lowered the stairs in pajamas for the third quarter and saw Ayomanor Rayar on television. His phone began to explode with all the great catches and TouchDown.
She didn’t lay down until 4 in the morning, after talking to her son.
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Stanford Elic Ayomanor makes a 97 -yard house call
Elic Ayomanor takes advantage of Colorado’s defensive error and carries the 97 -yards to the house for a Stanford TD.
“I thought, ‘You showed you, Elic. This was your day, this was your time,'” said Weiterman. “And what better day? Like the star schedule! It was in his letters, he had to be in his letters.”
Ayomanor’s outstanding game turned on a spark. Two weeks later, he had 14 reception yards against Washington and, later in the season, put 122 yards against No. 12 of Oregon State and 116 against Notre Dame. It ended with 1,013 yards in 62 receptions, and obtained the honor mention of the honors of all leagues. He received the Jon Cornish trophy, given the best Canadian university soccer player.
Last season, Ayomanor had similar numbers: 63 receptions, 831 yards, six touchdowns) and it was a selection of the entire second team of ACC. Stanford once again lost the postseason, and after only 24 university games, he chose to enter the NFL draft.
“For me to decide to go to the NFL, it is similar to the reason I left my hometown first,” he said. “I always wanted to look for more difficult and challenging environments, so that I can grow faster.”
The ayomanor of 6 feet and 2 inches has spent the last months immersed in the preparation of the NFL draft. It had solid numbers in The Combine earlier this month, running a 40 -yard race of 4.44 yards and placing a vertical of 38.5 inches, which occupied the seventh place between all resources in the class. Explorers believe he has the ability to see early play time as a rookie. In the recent draft seven rounds by ESPN analyst, Matt Miller, Ayomanor was projected for New England patriots in number 69 in general.
Wherever Ayomanor lands, it will be the next mile score on his trip and a destination that many around him knew he was capable.
When Dillon left the bar in Ontario long after midnight on the night of the Colorado game, he thought for himself: “You go to the NFL, young. You made your ticket.”
