PHOTO COURTESY OF PIERSON MEIER
Medicine Hat's Pierson Meier poses in his Western Mustangs uniform in his freshman season with the USports team based in London, Ont.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
It’s hard to beat the start of Piercen Meier’s University football career.
The 18-year-old Hat High alumni was a part of the Western Mustangs team that won the Vanier Cup in December 2021. The Mustangs, based in London, Ont., beat the University of Saskatchewan 27-21 Dec. 4 to capture the USports title.
The defensive linebacker said it was a great step for him to join the Mustangs.
“It’s definitely a difference from Hat High or high school football,” Meier said. It’s a big step and for me, it was like a big fish in a small pond becoming a small fish in a big pond. That’s what I felt like.”
Meier, like most freshmen, did not dress for games this season but was instead used in practice with the older players and were depth. Meier said being on the sidelines was a humbling moment for him.
“I’m going to use it for my advantage because now I need to tweak and fix,”Meier said. “One of the reasons I didn’t play this year was because I wasn’t in the playbook enough and I didn’t understand the new system fast enough and I didn’t understand the new system fast enough.”
He said he’s taken that feeling into the off-season and has applied it to his training. When he’s not working as a labourer for his dad at LNT Enterprises, Meier said he’s focused at getting better and understanding the playbooks more.
“I’m studying the playbook every night to make sure my mental game is there because in high school, I can get away with just being physical,” Meier said. “Whereas in university, it’s a lot more mental than physical, I think because everybody is physically matched to you. So to have an advantage over the other football players, you have to be mentally smarter and understand the defence and you have to understand the offence as well.”
He lived with two other football players in a townhouse-style residence. Meier said he’s learned a lot about himself moving across the country for school and being on his own for the first time and said he had to lose a bit of his ego.
“I have a great support system in Medicine Hat but at the end of the day, ultimately, it was just me alone in my room with my thoughts,” Meier said. “That’s when you really have to find it within yourself to overcome that adversity.
“There’s a saying, when a warrior goes to overcome a challenge, he has to lose a part of him that he had before – I felt like I lost my ego.”
He said the biggest difference between London and Medicine Hat is the people and small-town feel the Hat has.
“I feel like people in London, it’s such a big city. Nobody really knows each other as much as Medicine Hat,” Meier said. “Here, I can go to a gas station and somebody would know who I am, and there it’s like, I go to the gas station and I’m just another university student.”
Hat High Hawks head coach Quinn Skelton said it was exciting to see Meier visit Hat High with his Vanier Cup ring, and said he uses Hawks alumni like him as motivation for younger players.
” I think perspective is always tough for the young guys, and Pierson is a great example of a kid who kept his nose to the grindstone and always worked,” Skelton said. “He was always working and never gave up, had big dreams and now he’s living it in Western and things are turning going his way. It’s just a great example for all the rest of the boys.”
