Duane Vienneau: BC Lions are coming home! Team President weighs in on Touchdown Kelowna and the long opening road trip
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Zach Harrison-Price from the Historic Wall Center. We welcome back to the program. And we welcome Dwayne Vigneault home, BC Lions president, because my goodness, what an escapade it has been for the Lions in the early part of this Canadian Football League season. Welcome home, Dwayne. Good to see you again.
Thank you. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said. You know, welcome home.
How did the BC Lions manage an extended training and travel schedule before returning home?
It has been a long stretch, and we're happy to get coming home here.
So just give us some insight into the logistics of all of this. You do your training camp in Kamloops, and then all of a sudden, here comes the Canadian Football League season, and we're playing games in Kelowna, and we're playing games on the road, and we're practicing in Surrey. So give us an idea of the logistics.
Preseason game on the island.
Preseason game on the island. So give us a sense of just how much shuttling your staff and your players have been doing here over the last couple of months.
Well, yeah, so it's... First off, I want to say, you know, our team has been... know super resilient you know it's just been it has been obviously challenging but i will you basically started in may we started we're basically in kamloops for the month um we do uh we we have to take a plane to get to our home uh you know pre-season game and um and then we get back to kamloops to finish off camp we then break camp come into surrey Then we do a few road games. Then from there, we then have to pick up everything from Surrey and transplant it into Kelowna because we were there for almost two weeks. And when people say you had a game in Kelowna, we did have two games in Kelowna and built a festival around it.
But our entire football team, trainers, practice roster, everybody then moved because that's where we were. That was our temporary home. Then we break from Kelowna and then head back to Surrey, then on the road, and now finally here we are back and we're able to get into our home stadium on July the 25th, which it's crazy to think that our first time in our home stadium is almost August.
I've seen some chatter amongst your fans. Competitive disadvantage, is that fair to say, Dwayne?
No, I don't know. I wouldn't sit here and say that, but I will tell you, I am proud of the team. I really am. It is hard to do. We're probably the only team that actually doesn't do the camp. Well, Toronto does this, I believe, but just to go do training camp in Kamloops is tough. And so adding another element to that is just a whole new piece. And I think we're good at it. We've become good at it. We did that touchdown Victoria game, touchdown Pacific and Victoria in 24. That really helped us to be able to do Kelowna because you just start to understand what to expect and what it's all about and how to make it all happen. So all I can say is we don't have to travel this week. Teams are going to sleep on their own beds, and we're super excited to be able to do this.
What about the time in Cologne, our first chance to visit with you? I mean, I thought visually on television it presented well. You talked about the fact that it wasn't just two games. It was a week-long festival with a gala and concerts and clinics and all those types of things. From the football organization's perspective, how did it go in the Okanagan?
could not have gone better to be honest it was tremendous both games were sold out we uh you know we had 19 000 something the first game 19 000 a little bit less the next game that was by design because there's a couple of areas that we might have put too many people in the first game then we decided to to fix that a little bit um but no tremendous and the city of Kelowna All the fans were just happy with it. That first game was electric. Then we continued. The next day, we had a breakfast with the team, and there was a couple of thousand people that showed up on a Sunday morning to downtown for a breakfast. We had a gala on the beach. We had a bunch of football programming that we managed. Then concerts on the water again before both home games, plus some free concerts along the way, plus a festival that went through the entire week downtown as well.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:28
2
How did the BC Lions manage an extended training and travel schedule before returning home?
0:28–6:07
3
What logistics challenges did the team face moving from Kamloops to Surrey to Kelowna?
6:07–12:50
4
Did playing multiple games and events in Kelowna create a competitive disadvantage?
12:50–17:38
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Sekeres & Price Show
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