The Redblacks bring CFL football back to Ottawa, but also a fresh set of personal stories.
Wide receiver Carlton Mitchell, 26, from Gainesville, Florida, has plenty to share, including run-ins with terrifying (to him) squirrels. A fitness freak, Mitchell trains with a facial mask that would frighten most neighbourhood squirrels. The black mask covers his nose and mouth, with tiny filters that allow limited oxygen flow, causing his body to create more oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Canadian cyclist Ryder Hesjedal uses a variation of this device.
Mitchell will also tell you he is the second most famous athletic personality in the family. Angela Mitchell, Carlton’s mother, is a nursing anesthetist by profession, and works in the corner of amateur and professional boxers, a “cut doctor” for such pros as Antonio Tarver – the first fighter to knock out Roy Jones Jr.
“When I got drafted in Cleveland (the NFL Browns), the media talked more about her than about me,” Mitchell says. “They had her highlights up there.”
Carlton’s father, Carl Mitchell, played professional basketball in Europe for 10 years, but was divorced from Angela when Carlton was six. Angela raised Carlton and his sister alone. She’s long been in Carlton’s corner, as well as those amateur and pro boxers with whom she works.
“That’s my inspiration right there, she’s always had something going on,” Mitchell says. “She stays active and she’s the one who keeps me going.”
Carlton Mitchell has lots on the go. The Redblacks selected him with their sixth pick in the first round of the CFL dispersal draft, meaning Mitchell scarcely had more than a few cups of coffee with the Edmonton Eskimos, who signed him in October, 2013, after he was released by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In two games with Edmonton, Mitchell showed enough to spark Ottawa’s interest, making six catches for 69 yards.
At 6-3, and a sculpted 215 pounds, Mitchell always could run. With a pair of large receiver’s “mitts” and a 4.49-second time in the 40-yard dash, Mitchell impressed scouts at the NFL combine, convincing the Browns to select him in the sixth round, 177th overall in 2010.
From there, he’s lived a typical nomadic football existence – spending 2010 and 2011 with the Browns, seeing action in 16 games, before getting cut and joining the Dallas Cowboys and then the Bucs.
He feels blessed to be in Ottawa, Mitchell says, and in the best shape of his career, thanks to hypnosis, and his training mask, to go with a natural work ethic.
“I took three days off after last season, and got to work. Biking every day, 30 miles. Boxing. Sports hypnosis.”
The hypnosis helps his state of mind, and his training mask works the physical endurance and conditioning. Seemingly out of a Hollywood thriller, Mitchell’s mask mimics the effect of high altitude training.
“You take it off and you feel so much better,” Mitchell says. “ I love it. I was thinking of getting some for the receivers. We have to be in shape. With the type of offence we’re running you have to have speed, go hard all day.
“Whatever edge we can get we have to take it.”
Mitchell finds that edge by training with boxers and by developing martial arts techniques used in Muay Thai. Being a competitive boxer wasn’t an option.
“I could box, but I’m not a fighter,” he says. “I have a weak nose.”
But a nose for sports. An effective baseball pitcher, centre fielder and first baseman in high school, Mitchell was an accidental wide receiver. He didn’t play football until Grade 10 at Gaither High in Gainesville, when he joined his buddies at a tryout.
Mitchell figured he’d just punt for the team, but when a snap sailed over his head one day and he raced down the sidelines with the ball, his coach moved him over to receiver. Et voila. An NCAA career at South Florida was launched.
“All I knew (at first) was a go route, a hitch route and blocking,” he says. “I just worked harder.”
He hopes to have a longer football stay in Ottawa than Edmonton, once he gets used to the black squirrels running around the Nation’s Capital. Mitchell has never seen the like of it, and it terrifies him.
“I watch Animal Planet, and I never saw a black squirrel until I came here,” Mitchell says. “I feel there’s something you’re all not telling me.”
Seems Mitchell was scarred in his childhood – chasing after a squirrel on the grounds of the local zoo when he was six, stepping on its tail, only to watch it turn on him, get under his shirt and scratch him.
“I’m freaking out, I’m crying and everyone’s laughing,” he says.
Naturally, the other day on the campus of Carleton University, where the team trains, Mitchell had a squirrel encounter that will haunt his sleep.
“I was just walking, the trash can started shaking and he jumps out and stares at me,” Mitchell says. “I don’t like squirrels. I don’t have an ounce of fear, I’ll skydive, anything, but squirrels and spiders – I’m a whole other person.”
His take on squirrels: “I don’t trust them, they’ve got that look.”
On his popular Twitter account, @c_mitch18, Mitchell tweets about squirrels and other things that catch his eye.