Lineman establishing himself as role model

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Jed Roberts wants to give back through sports some of what he's got out of it. The 28-year-old defensive linebacker has got from sports ? football, in his case ? a university education and a pro career with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League. He says that he's only now beginning to discover his Native heritage.

"I'm only just beginning to discover it through my dad," says the articulate young man. "I wasn't able to be close to him as I grew up. But, when I was growing up, my sports idol was my dad. That was the one way I had of connection with him." Jay Roberts played tight end for seven years with the Ottawa Rough Riders. Jed was born in the Canadian Capital.

"But I'm part Sioux, from Iowa," he explains, "and some of my family goes back to Oklahoma. My father's mother was full-blood Sioux." His father worked with several Canadian Metis organizations.

Jed Roberts has plenty to offer as a role model, having had to overcome more than the average man on his way to a professional career. He wears hearing aids in both ears, although he reads lips expertly.

"It's a pretty useful skill, and a lot of people have tried to get me to help them learn it," he says. "But, seriously, it's only in the last 10 years that I've come to terms with the hearing problem ? it's a profound congenital hearing deficit that I've had since I was born. It'll likely get gradually worse until by the time I'm 60 I won't be able to hear much of anything."

Roberts learned to talk, to hear, to read, after other kids his age and, as does most any child who grows up with a disability, he felt embarrassed by it.

"I didn't like it when people would talk louder for me so I could hear," he says. "I know now that they were trying to help me, but then it was difficult. It's been a hard road. You start out with two strikes on you."

But with two strikes, the optimistic Roberts was far from out. He went to the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley, Colo., where he studied physical education and English, and played football for the UNC Bears, whom he captained in his senior year. The same year, he was named all-conference in the North Central section of Division II.

"After five years there, I signed with Winnipeg in 1990 as an import outside linebacker, the position I played in university," he says. Bill Quinter was Blue Bomber director of player personnel and Ron Simonson was defensive line coach ? both knew Roberts from his university football days. Even so, he was released and picked up by the Eskimos later that year, only to play his first game at Commonwealth Stadium against Winnipeg. Roberts had played in every game since the start of 1991, until a hamstring injury sidelined him for two games this September.

"He's a good team guy, and he's the kind of player who fits into a position," says head coach Ron Lancaster. "Jed's a hard worker, knows what he wants and he does it. He's in a position that sometimes gets overlooked from the outside, but he's not overlooked inside the team."

When the Eskimos signed Roberts, it was as a linebacker, but the coaches didn't know quite where to play him that first year.

"He was a kind of mystery player when he arrived," says Lancaster. "We first looked at him as a linebacker, then with the style of defence we went to, we tried to play him at rush outside, but then we tried him as s straight defensive lineman.

"In his development, he's been a good special teams player," the coach continues. "That's likely where he first made his mark. He's a quiet guy with a great sense of humor, and he fits in with those guys. I would think that he's pretty satisfied, now."

With his career, Roberts does indeed seem satisfied. And with his family ? wife Nanette, three-year-old Arielle and 19-month-old Dakota. But he is concerned with helping out youth.

"I want to convince kids to stay in school, and to get involved in sports and recreation," he says. "I'm just staring to get involved with the Crystal Kis, and I'd like to help with some of the fund raising for a recreation centre so the kids have somewhere to go, like I did when I was growing up." Roberts says that time spent in his youth at a boys' club kept him off the streets and out of trouble.

"It gave me somewhere to go to shoot baskets, whatever," he says. "Sports is a great way for kids to develop as people. It is one way kids can develop themselves so that they're ready for a lot of things later on in life." Roberts recently visited Native communities in the Lesser Slave Lake area of northern Alberta, and there he saw youth, he says, who didn't see any future after they'd turned 15 or 16.

"I want to be able to do something in that kind of situation," he says. Just making himself available as a role model will help.