CARVER MEMORIES – June 17, 2022

CROSS-BORDER COACH

Canadian Football Hall-of-Famer Orlondo Steinauer knows there are no do-overs in football – or family
 
On a cool, windy mid-June evening in 2022, Orlondo Steinauer was formally inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame at Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton, Ontario.

The ceremony recognized Steinauer's storied playing career in the Canadian Football League. It was held outdoors with a huge stage set up facing the west stands and shown on a giant video board located high above the north end zone.

The occasion marked the first time that a Western Washington University (WWU) alum has been inducted into any major professional sports hall of fame.



Steinauer, a consensus All-America cornerback at WWU in 1995, was a dominant defensive back during his 13 seasons in the CFL. He played for three teams including the Ottawa Rough Riders (1996), the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (1997-2000) and the Toronto Argonauts (2001-08).

Known to many by the nickname 'O,' Steinauer won CFL Grey Cup championships, a smaller version of the National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl, with Hamilton in 1999 and Toronto in 2004. He was an all-star at three different defensive positions: cornerback, halfback and safety; earning seven East Division All-Star awards and five CFL All-Star honors.

Steinauer's professional career featured 49 interceptions, including five returned for touchdowns. His 1,178 interception return yards are the second most in CFL history.

At the induction ceremony, Steinauer sat in an aisle seat in the second row of a special section set up for the inductees, their families and other dignitaries. To the right of Orlondo were his staunchest supporters and biggest fans, wife Gina and their three daughters: Kiana, Rheyna and Taeya.

Gina and 'O' first met in 1992 at WWU. Then known as Gina Sampson, she was an outstanding basketball player for the Vikings, being named the school's Female Athlete of the Year for 1994-95 and 1995-96.

"Orlondo and I have been together since my freshman year at Western," said Gina. "He is the hardest worker of anyone I have ever known. I trained hard in the off-season with him (at WWU). He would push me in the weight room. He was a point guard in high school so he really worked with me on a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have necessarily worked on, because I was a post player."

Steinauer led WWU to a 9-1 record as a senior in 1995, the Vikings being ranked No.1 nationally in the final poll. Western's Male Athlete of the Year, he had a national-leading 10 pass interceptions that season, giving him 20 for his career.  

In 2003, the couple made a decision to find one place to live that would be home. They became Canadian citizens and the family settled in Hamilton. Gina worked as a counselor for an international relocation firm in Canada and coached her daughters on various club teams.

The night after his hall of fame induction, Steinauer was in the same spot at Tim Hortons Field, but in a much different role, as President of Football Operations and Head Coach of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, who were playing their 2022 home opener against the Calgary Stampeders.

Life after playing career

Following retirement as a player in 2008, Steinauer became a football analyst for Rogers Sportsnet.

In 2010, Steinauer began coaching professionally, as an assistant at Toronto for two seasons, helping the Argonauts to a Grey Cup title in 2012. He then assisted at Hamilton for four years, the first three as defensive coordinator and the fourth adding assistant head coach to the title. In 2014 and 2015, the Tiger-Cats reached the Grey Cup.

As an athlete, Steinauer possessed assets that are essential to becoming a good coach – strong communication and leadership skills and a dedication to being a student of the game. A natural born leader, he had that innate ability to relate to people.

Steinauer's success caught the attention of former British Columbia Lions head coach Jeff Tedford. A long-time college coach and former CFL quarterback, he had just returned to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I ranks to coach his alma mater, Fresno State, taking over a team that had won just one game in 2016.

Nearly all of Tedford's staffing hires were people he'd known from the past. Except for one, that of defensive coordinator, a position he offered to Steinauer.

"When I was in the CFL last, and having to prepare to play Hamilton, it was a nightmare," Tedford said at a news conference introducing Steinauer as his defensive coordinator. The only contact the two had prior to his call to Steinauer and subsequent interview was a quick handshake following a game.

The move to California was a major one for Steinauer. While the family was happily settled in Canada, head coaching positions, collegiately and professionally, were far more plentiful in the United States. So, the decision was made to return to the U.S.

But while Steinauer had played by American rules in high school and college football, his last 20 years as a player and coach were under Canadian rules. Those are much different: the field is longer and wider, 12 players are on the field for each team instead of 11 and there are three downs to a possession as opposed to four.

Nevertheless, in 2017, Steinauer helped Fresno State become only the second team in college football history to win 10 games a year after losing 10 or more games, going from 1-11 to 10-4. The Bulldogs lost by just three points, 17-14, to Boise State in the Mountain West Conference championship game and ended the storybook campaign with an invitation to the Hawaii Bowl and a 33-27 victory over Houston.

The Bulldogs' success made Steinauer a finalist for the prestigious Frank Broyles Award which goes to the nation's top collegiate assistant football coach. A big-time college head coaching job seemed just a phone call away.

But while Steinauer is consumed, ambitious and driven, like most football coaches; in other ways, he is very different. At Fresno, he was concerned about the demands his job was having on his homelife, leaving before his kids were awake and coming back after they had gone to bed.

Making the best use of time

Steinauer remembered his own childhood as an only child of a hard-working single mother and a father he never knew. Growing up in Seattle, he often awakened and returned to an empty home. His grandfather, Gene, a police sergeant in King County, and his grandmother, Bonnie, helped fill the void, but his experience growing up, often by himself, left an impression.

"My dad was never there. That's what I was not going to be," Steinauer said. "I think all of that heightened my awareness of my parenting. I don't think it's better or worse than anybody's. I think I'm in tune with the little things that I think make a big difference, like bike rides, homework, calls, texts … going to the water, doing things we are passionate about. That's important to me because I didn't have it."

"Football isn't who I am, it's what I do. I know for others it's different. It's not for me to judge them. But I know what matters to me and our family. I want to see my kids. I want to be a part of their lives. This job allows me to do that."

So, when those phone calls came in regarding his availability for coaching jobs, Steinauer focused on just one: Hamilton President Scott Mitchell wanted Steinauer back home, assisting former NFL stalwarts June Jones and Jerry Glanville, while making the transition to directing the team.

A year later in 2019, Steinauer became the Hamilton head coach and guided the Tiger-Cats to a 15-4 record, the win total tying the CFL record by a rookie head coach and earning a trip to the Grey Cup. He was named CFL Coach of the Year.

And following a season lost to the pandemic, Steinauer led Hamilton to yet another Grey Cup appearance in 2021.

Steinauer loves football and he loves family and the CFL gave him a place where he could balance those two passions better than any other. The league is not all year round. The days may be long during the season but you have an off-season, you have time to spend with your wife and daughters and whatever they happen to be engaged with.

"Football matters so much to me," said the 49-year-old Steinauer. "It gave me a life. It gave me a career. The CFL has afforded a certain lifestyle that works for me." And the Steinauer family is flourishing.

Oldest daughter Kiana interned last summer as marketing manager for the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Class A farm team of the New York Mets. She earned her bachelor's degree in psychology and marketing at Southern Connecticut State University in 2020 and just finished her Master of Science degree in sports management.

Before her basketball career at SCSU was cut short by injury as a senior. Kiana was an honorable mention Division II Conference Commissioners Association (D2CCA) All-American as a junior, leading NCAA II nationally in both double-doubles (24) and rebounding (444, 15.3) while averaging 18.4 (534) points. She became just the second player in NCAA II women's basketball history to have a 30-30 game with 31 rebounds and 33 points in a 96-48 win over Concordia NY on Dec. 19, 2018. That effort earned her a spot in Sports Illustrated "Faces in the Crowd."

Rheyna, the middle daughter, just started at SCSU last fall on a basketball scholarship. And Taeya, the youngest and a senior in high school, has already been endorsed by the rest of the family as the best athlete of the three.


Steinauer (center) and his wife Gina and their three daughters (l-r) Rheyna, Kiana and Taeya

The Western experience for Gina and O

During Orlondo Steinauer's final regular season at Western in 1995, the Vikings were undefeated (9-0) for the first time since 1938. Their lone loss came in the first round of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) national playoffs to eventual national co-champion Central Washington.

WWU was ranked No.1 nationally for the last five weeks of the regular season as well as in the final poll, the first time in program history for both accomplishments.

Steinauer, who was rebounding from career-threatening knee surgery, had a national-leading 10 pass interceptions that gave him 20 for his career. He earned NAIA National Player of the Week honors with three interceptions, returning one for a touchdown, in a regular season 19-16 win over arch-rival Central, quarterbacked by Jon Kitna who later played in the NFL. That also gave Steinauer Sports Illustrated "Faces in the Crowd" recognition.

A graduate of Lynnwood High School, Steinauer received scholarship offers in football, basketball and baseball.

Steinauer is the first WWU athlete to be a head coach in any major professional sport. He was inducted into the WWU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2015, five years after wife, Gina, was inducted.

Gina, a graduate of Redmond (Wash.) High School, was a first-team NAIA Division I and Kodak College Division All-American in 1996 and was the WWU Female Athlete of the Decade for the 1990s. She finished her four-year career with 1,786 points, 1,277 rebounds, 284 steals and 146 blocked shots, setting 18 school records.

As a senior, Gina led the Vikings to the quarterfinals at the NAIA National Tournament before falling to eventual national champion Union TN, averaging 17.5 points, a school-record 12.9 rebounds and 2.2 blocked shots. She scored a school record 42 points against Western Oregon on Dec. 9, 1995 and had 33 points and a school record 25 rebounds versus Puget Sound on Feb. 28, 1995 with 25 points and 22 rebounds in the second half alone.