Lancaster Back on Taylor Field

By: Rob Vanstone
The Leader-Post

For Bob Lancaster, the reminders are everywhere.

There is, for example, the gigantic photo of his legendary father. Ron Lancaster's image is displayed on the outer west side of Mosaic Stadium.

"You can't miss it," said Bob Lancaster, who does miss the city in which he grew up.

"I love Regina. I've always loved Saskatchewan. It's the old saying: You can take the kid out of Saskatchewan, but you can't take Saskatchewan out of the kid.''

Bob Lancaster, 40, is the defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach at Catawba College in Salisbury, NC, where he has spent the last 11 years. Lately, however, he is moonlighting as a guest coach at the Saskatchewan Roughriders' training camp.

"I was talking with one of the coaches, Joe Womack," Lancaster said in reference to the Roughriders' director of player personnel, who is also tutoring the team's safeties.

"He said, 'I remember being here as a rookie. The first touchdown pass thrown against me in the CFL was in that corner, and your dad threw it on me.' He said, 'Did you ever think when you were a snot-nosed kid running around here that some day you'd be coming back here to be a coach?'"

Womack was flashing back to a game in 1977, when he was a defensive back with the Calgary Stampeders. In the southwest corner of Taylor Field, he surrendered one of the 333 touchdown passes The Little General threw in 19 years as a CFL player.

Sixteen of those seasons were spent with the Roughriders. Upon retiring as a player, Ron Lancaster spent the 1979 and 1980 seasons as the team's head coach. Now, nearly 30 years later, there is another Coach Lancaster in camp.

Bob Lancaster has previously been a guest coach with the Edmonton Eskimos and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, back in the days when his famous father coached those teams. The youngest of No. 23's three children has also coached in NFL Europe and the American high school ranks.

Coaching-wise, this stop will be the briefest -- and among the most memorable.

"I'm really glad I came and did this," said a smiling Lancaster, whose wife (Kimberly) and five-year-old daughter (Alexus) are back in North Carolina.

Alexus graduates from kindergarten today. A proud father would love to witness the occasion, but how could he pass up this opportunity?

Upon returning to Saskatchewan for the first time in roughly 10 years, Bob was welcomed by his sister (Regina-based Lana Mueller) and her husband (Larry). One of the first stops was Emerald Park Road, where the Lancaster family lived for 20 years.

"I went there the first night I got back,'' Bob said. "There were all the feelings again. You look at the park and think of the hide-and-go-seek and the games of football -- the shinny games out in front of the house when it's minus-40. It's like I was in a time warp. There were feelings coming up all the time ... good feelings.''

The feelings can also be bittersweet.

It has not yet been a year since Ron Lancaster died suddenly at age 69. The sad news of Sept. 18 prompted a torrent of condolences and tributes, which were appreciated by Lancaster's wife (Bev) and children (Bob, Lana and Ron Jr.).

"We're doing pretty well," Bob said. "We're so spread out. We stay in touch on the phone. I probably talk to Lana a bit more than I did before. I talk to my mom every day. Before, I might have called once a week to see how she and Dad were doing. Now I call every day.

"It has probably brought us a little closer. It might sound corny, but you start to understand a little more about life. Everyone thinks their dad's invincible. It doesn't matter if your dad's a steel worker or a lawyer. You just think your dad's invincible."

He is far from invisible -- as Bob Lancaster discovered the other day when he happened to look at the west-side grandstand and saw his father's name on the facing.

"You're in the middle of practice, trying to watch practice, and you go off in your own mind for a second," he said. "It's pretty emotional -- more emotional than I thought it would be. I didn't really think any of those feelings would happen, coming to grips with what happened.

"It's a bit of a closure, I hope, that's happening for me."