‘Brandon definitely saved me’: Reaves Brandon University alumni series: Through the decades By: Thomas Friesen Posted: 3:00 AM CST Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/02/2021 (1883 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Whether or not the Brandon University Bobcats realized it in 2009, Jordan Reaves needed them a hell of a lot more than they needed him.

Sure, then men’s basketball coach Keith Vassell took a chance signing six-foot-five forward, who was on house arrest for trafficking charges. But for Reaves, it was a second chance at life after spending most of his teen years in gangs, fights and, at times, handcuffs.

“I think it’s well-known that if sport wasn’t in my life I’m in jail or dead right now, that’s a guarantee,” Reaves told The Sun. “I lived my life fast, dangerous and sport was the thing that calmed me down, brought me back into reality.”

Reaves played five years with the Bobcats, including the first four of current bench boss Gil Cheung’s tenure. The physical, high-flying forward was a bright spot on some of the darkest years in program history as BU went 30-78 over that span, missing the playoffs all five years.

The losing bothered Reaves in those moments. In the grand scheme of life and compared to where he once was, he was winning.

The Winnipeg native joined a gang at 13 and was dealing drugs, fighting anyone who looked at him the wrong way. Fisticuffs put his wrists in cuffs for the first time at 15.

Looking back, Reaves said he had a falling out with his dad and former Blue Bomber running back Willard Reaves, which led to his gang involvement.

“I found a group of guys that treated me like I was their first priority,” Reaves said. “At the time I didn’t understand why. Later on, I understood (it was) because I was making good money for them … but they gave me that sense of family and brotherhood. I fell in love with that at 13 or 14 and that directed my path going into my later teen years.”

In Grade 10, Reaves was kicked out of St. John’s Ravenscourt, a private school he attended his whole life.

In February 2008, Reaves, who had just turned 18 in January, was charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking. While in jail, he said he found himself in a group of cells with three rival gang members. He heard them go into detail about how their friend killed a member of Reaves’ gang.

“(I) sat there thinking ‘I got too much to waste here. There’s no need for me to be in this lifestyle. I grew up in a great neighbourhood, I have a great family.’ It’s not like I had to struggle growing up, everything I put on myself,” Reaves said.

“I just made that decision that this isn’t me. I’m not this gang-banging, drug-dealing guy. I’m just an athletic, smart kid and I shouldn’t be doing this lifestyle. It took a week in the hole, 23-hour lockdown. I came out and remember hugging my mom saying ‘I’m never going back there.’”

He pleaded guilty to the trafficking charges in December and received a two-year-less-a-day sentence with a year of supervised probation.

He said he was able to return to high school under the condition he played basketball, which he did at Shaftesbury High School.

The Titans played a tournament in Brandon that year and Vassell approached him following a big game to recruit him. Reaves shrugged it off. He hadn’t really thought about his future: for a while, he didn’t think he had one.

But Vassell persisted in the summer and managed to bring him in for a visit.

“I met Andrew Kraus and Donovan Gayle, rest in peace to Deebo. Those were the first two guys I met, they took me under their wing like I was their little brother and I fell in love with that aspect,” Reaves said.

“I had forgotten how that team aspect and that family was. I fell back in love with that, and in turn, it made me fall back in love with basketball.”

Reaves was only allowed to leave his house in Brandon for classes and basketball activities.

That first year, and the second for that matter, weren’t pretty. The Bobcats struggled and missed their conference playoffs for the first time since the 1970s. Reaves will be the first to admit he didn’t play the right way, picking up 120 personal fouls in 40 games, averaging around 20 minutes per game with around six points per contest.

The foul count stayed around three per game, but he was playing around 30 minutes per game by his fourth year, averaging 13.6 points per game and 8.4 rebounds per game.

BU’s best record during Reaves’ five years was 7-13. He’s one of very few Bobcats men’s basketball players to spend five years in Brandon without competing in the post-season, though it’d hardly be fair to suggest that was his fault.

“We have this saying in football: ‘Do your one 12th.’ If you do your one 12th, that’s all you can do. You can’t do everybody’s job,” Reaves said. “The biggest thing I’ve learned about being a pro is you can only control what you do on that field or court.”

Reaves graduated from BU with a bachelor of science, majoring in math and minoring in computer science.

He still wanted to keep the basketball journey going, however, and headed to Spain in hopes of landing a professional contract. Six weeks later he was off to Slovenia, where he found out the pro world isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. Reaves said the guy running the academy tried to act as his agent and collect 60 per cent of his 2,500-Euro-per-month contract. Naturally, Reaves declined. Then he had an opportunity in France prove not much of one at all. After no one picked him up from the train station in a small town near the German border, he walked to the gym.

The manager told him he’d need to return to Canada to get a visa in order to play.

“I’m going to Canada and I’m staying in Canada, don’t worry about that,” Reaves replied.

Something changed when he returned to Winnipeg though. The game was no longer an escape or a happy place, but more like a job.

Seeking a change, he told neighbour Demitris Scouras, a former CFL player with the Ottawa Renegades, about what he was going through. The placekicker made a call to his agent Darren Gill. Within an hour, Gill was on the phone with Reaves, reminiscing about watching his old man rumble at Winnipeg Stadium in the 1980s. Gill signed him as a client and within 24 hours, got him workout with the Blue Bombers.

Just one problem: His last snap was as a 15-year-old running back for the Crescentwood Grizzlies, 10 years earlier.

He did enough to earn a trip to mini-camp at IMG Academy and to the regional combine in Edmonton as a receiver in 2015.

“Showing up there was a weird feeling because I’m showing up there with all these college kids who have been playing football since they were kids, haven’t missed a beat. There I am 10 years off the sport ready to jump in with all of them,” Reaves said.

“But it was fun. I love adversity, I love a challenge and I would have been upset if I didn’t place high in any one of those drills.”

Reaves reached the pre-season, caught one pass for six yards and didn’t quite make the final cut.

Determined to prove the Blue wrong, Reaves got back to work and signed with Saskatchewan in 2016. When he went down to Florida for mini camp in April, he planned to catch more passes and turn heads.

Head coach and general manager Chris Jones had other ideas, which were made clear during a receivers’ meeting.

“I hear Chris Jones (say) ‘Reaves, what the hell are you doing? … You’re with the DBs,’” said Reaves, who quickly made his way to coach Jason Shivers and the defensive backs meeting.

“I’m looking at him like Chinese on the whiteboard. I have no idea what he’s writing … I didn’t know cover 4, cover 3, nickel, dime, I didn’t know none of that. I was watching and listening to gibberish.”

He ran a few plays at safety, then cornerback and even linebacker.

By the end of Day 2, the Riders had the 220-pounder on the defensive line.

Come training camp, the same thing happened when Reaves joined a DB meeting.

“When you hear coach Jones yell at you, your heart drops. That’s the definition of southern football yelling at you, you better turn and respect that,” Reaves said.

“He’s like ‘You’re with the big men, you’re playing D-line.’ I looked at him like ‘Coach, I’m not even the biggest DB here, why are you going to put me on the line?’

“… When I tell you I got tossed by some of our O-linemen, it was not fun.”

Serving mostly on special teams, Reaves played six games before tearing the medial collateral ligament (MCL) and meniscus in his left knee, ending his season. He was told to bulk up and was set to return nearly 30 pounds heavier in 2017.

Then his old life caught up with him.

Reaves was charged with possession for the purposes of trafficking cocaine before the season. This time, he held firm he was innocent.

“I talked to coach Jones and felt he had my respect and trust. I told him ‘I promise you I had nothing to do with this, this was a wrong spot, wrong time situation and I will not be charged with this,” Reaves said.

While professional sports teams make exceptions for star athletes when they encounter legal trouble, they tend to make examples of fringe players. The Riders released him when the news went public.

“For the next year I was definitely depressed,” Reaves said. “I was down on myself. It sucked. I finally got something I love again and it got ripped from me for no reason. Well, I’m not going to say no reason. I hung out with someone I knew was a bad person from his past but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“That was kind of on me for sure hanging out with the wrong crowd.”

This time, Reaves denied the allegations and while the man he was caught with pled guilty, Reaves was acquitted on Jan. 24, 2018.

The day before camp that year, coach Jones called while he was in Winnipeg. An hour later he was at the airport, headed for Regina and redemption.

Reaves finally made it through a season, featuring primarily on special teams with a few snaps at defensive end. He recorded the last of his 13 special teams tackles in a 23-18 West semifinal loss to Winnipeg.

And he hasn’t played a snap since.

His 2019 season was over before it started at training camp in Saskatoon.

At the end of a long session, the Riders were doing one-on-ones between the offensive and defensive linemen.

“I got six reps, I was cutting people in line getting my reps. I got my sixth and stood back. The whistle blew and our D-line coach at the time said we’re doing one more, Jordan come get this rep,” Reaves said.

“I lined up on the outside. The tackle took two very wide horizontal slides, left he whole middle open for me. I planted … and my cleat just stayed in the ground. That turf up at Saskatoon is very, very hard. I stuck my right foot in the ground, started to turn, foot didn’t come out of the ground and I just felt a pop go through my body. I knew it was ACL right away.”

Scans revealed a torn ACL, LCL and meniscus in his right knee.

“I just went to my dorm room and started crying,” Reaves said. “I was bawling, called my fiancée and told her what happened. I was down and out again, depressed, I felt like I had worked so hard, climbed out of a hole I dug myself, climbed to the top and someone knocked me right back down again.”

Reaves went through another surgery and rehab process, getting back just in time to find out COVID-19 led to the cancellation of the 2020 season. He received a massive vote of confidence in December, though, as Saskatchewan re-signed him on a one-year deal for 2021.

Reaves notes his lack of high school and university football experience actually help him now in that he’s not as worn out as most 31-year-olds. At the same time, he knows his playing days are numbered and is planning ahead.

His goals include mentoring and training young athletes in his current hometown, Huntersville, N.C. He’s also interested in tutoring kids in math and potentially putting his computer science skills to use — he’s learning a few new coding languages right now.

He’s engaged to Shatfesbury alumna and professional race car driver Amber Balcaen and has worked a few races as part of her pit crew with potentially more to come.

It’s a future Reaves never would have predicted as a teen, and never would have had the chance to see if not for some good people, basketball, and the Wheat City.

“I had to make a choice: Keep down this path, you know you’re going down the wrong way and you know it’s not going to end good or take this choice, leave all those garbage people, garbage past in the past and move forward. Sports is what brought that to me. Sports brought me that real sense of family, not the fake sense in the gangs I was feeling. It was that true feeling of someone actually caring about me, caring about the well-being of everyone in the room as one,” Reaves said.

“Brandon was everything I needed. It got me away from Winnipeg and the people I was hanging out with, the mindset I was stuck in back there. It gave me a fresh start. I got to meet some new people, amazing people, some of my best friends still are from the Brandon basketball teams and volleyball teams.

“… Brandon was the best thing that could have happened to me … Brandon definitely saved me.”

As for this year, you can bet if there’s a season, you’ll see No. 90 in green and white.

“I miss my teammates like you wouldn’t believe. Whether it’s getting on each other or just talking, I miss that brotherhood so getting back and seeing everyone, being with everyone is something I’ve been missing the past two years,” Reaves said.

“One thing is I hope I can see those beautiful fans in those stands. I miss our Roughrider fans, best fans in the nation. You can’t describe the feeling of coming out to ‘Bring ‘em out’ in Mosaic Stadium with 30,000 fans screaming back at you. It’s a feeling you can’t describe, you can’t mimic it … I want to feel that smoke blow, feel that crowd and stand on that field and take it in again.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @thomasmfriesen