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The hope was bringing a player like that into a Bombers locker room filled with veterans and character men would make a positive impact and so far it appears to have done just that.

“We pride ourselves in having a good, strong locker room with veteran leadership here and he’s excelling in that environment,” Walters says.

“Him wanting to go out with the Bisons and help out and maybe talk to kids about some of the things that went wrong in his past is a very good thing. He wants to stop people from making some of the same decisions that he made.”

Simonise says he did not have the same luxury he’s providing for the Bisons players when he was in college himself.

He strayed from the straight and narrow and didn’t get good enough grades to stay in school despite being an all-Canadian in 2015 at the U of C.

“If I had somebody that was impactful for me come and tell me to get my stuff together earlier, I probably would have found myself in a different situation,” Simonise says.

“There’s so many things that I feel like I decided to do that could have finished my football career but fortunately I’m still playing and that’s one of the reasons why I feel like giving my advice and being able to be available to people who need it could come in so handy. I feel grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had in football, especially since it all could have been taken away.”

In a way, you might say that Simonise has benefitted from his own mistakes.

Having that year to self-reflect allowed him to mature, to realize that you have to act like a professional even before you become a professional if you want to attain your goals.