Photo: Courtesy Toronto Argonauts
On the second day of Argos training camp, Canadian OL Theren Churchill has announced he’s stepping away from the team for an undetermined period of time.
Not wanting to miss the birth of his first child, which is due in the coming weeks, Churchill is returning home to be with his girlfriend Hallie. I’d have made the exact same decision, though it’s no one’s place to judge anyone’s call on a matter such as this.
When Churchill returns, he’ll have a number of parenting resources at his disposal with a number of new fathers on the roster. Boris Bede, who has 11-day-old and 18-month old babies at home, joked yesterday that training camp was a vacation from all the diaper changing he’d been doing as of late. If I were Theren, he’d be the first guy I’d talk to when I got back to camp.
The Argonauts, as they always are, have been very understanding when it comes to players’ personal matters, and he has the full support of the team.
The Argos know what they have in Churchill, and his absence, be it a week or longer, probably means he’ll spend the season backing up at guard again, which may have been the plan anyway.
When the Argonauts released starting Canadian right tackle Jamal Campbell, I assumed initially that Churchill and Shane Richards might be in the running for that position, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt they’d go American at both tackle spots. We’ll see in the coming days how Churchill’s absence impacts the rotation and ratio on the line.