Kyle Borsa awaits CFL draft after strong combine performance

Kyle Borsa believes the CFL draft is a symbol for all the hurdles he has overcome during his university football career.

“Hearing my name called is going to be a dream come true. I can’t even describe it to you, just so much hard work and so much adversity I had to overcome to get here, so it’s going to be great validation of just overcoming things and putting in hard work all the time and never letting off the gas,” Borsa told reporters Tuesday.

While many of the top Canadian prospects in the May 4 draft missed out on their final year of football due to COVID-19, the University of Regina Rams running back hasn’t played a down since 2018.

He was suspended for the 2019 season following a failed drug test.

Borsa said he bought a product from a store in Regina and didn’t know it contained a substance that was added to the banned list that year.

“I cried on a few shoulders. I had a couple buddies who were there for me and I didn’t want to show my parents how hurt I was so I didn’t want to go to my parents as much,” Borsa said.

“That was a tough time and although I had great supports, it was still me in my own head and I had to battle that and I’m happy to say I overcame that and happy that’s in the past.”

Borsa said with the time off, he turned to focusing on working out and getting into shape for the next time he would take the field.

That turned out to be when he hit the field to take videos to send to CFL scouts for the combine.

Due to COVID-19, the scouting combine had to be done virtually with prospects filming their results and sending them to scouts.

“I would have liked to do it in front of a bunch of scouts. I think it would have done the justice a bit better when you can use the same timing systems and the eye test as well,” Borsa said.

“It didn’t change my approach to how I approached the combine. I would have done it the same anyways.”

Borsa, who played high school with the Riffel Royals in Regina, impressed scouts with his combine numbers.

He ran the fastest 40-yard dash with a time of 4.46 seconds, did 22 reps on the 225-pound bench press, ran a 6.80-second three-cone drill and had a broad jump of 10 feet 2 1/8 inches.

Borsa has another year of eligibility with the Rams, but he wanted to declare for the draft this year because he heard some CFL teams were interested in him as a prospect.

“That led me to stay in (the draft) and I knew I was going to put up a good pro day or combine so I thought that would up my stock,” Borsa said.

And now comes the waiting as Borsa — who told his mom when he was eight that he was going to be in CFL — finds out where and if he will continue playing football in the pros.

“(Getting drafted) is a great symbol of overcoming adversity. I can strongly say that there’s a lot of other guys in my position at that time that would’ve moved on from the game and got their degree and moved on with life because football doesn’t last forever,” Borsa said.

“That’s not the route I chose because football is my dream, my passion.”