Candace Hubbard, Football Canada’s “Mom of the Year”

by Football Canada Staff

Football is often described as the ultimate team sport. Quarterbacks need receivers, rushers need offensive linemen, kickers need holders, and so on. This applies off the field as well, in the support that a player’s family provides as they proceed up through the ranks, hoping to achieve their dreams of playing at the highest level.

One such example of this is Chuba Hubbard, the Sherwood Park, Alberta, native who is now with the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, after an outstanding career at Oklahoma State, where led the NCAA in rushing in 2019, and won the Cornish Trophy as the top Canadian in the NCAA the same year.

With him every step of the way has been his mother, Candace, Football Canada’s 2021 “Mom of the Year” this weekend, who spoke with FootballCanada.com as part of the celebration of Football Weekend in Canada.

Candace Hubbard, in an interview with Jim Mullin, president of Football Canada.

It initially took some convincing for Candace to become a football mom in the first place. “He would come into the house every day and be ‘can I play football, Mom?’ and I [said] ‘no way, nobody’s touching or roughing you up.’” Her initial resistance eventually subsided and Chuba first registered for organized football at age 9. She noted that her initial hesitancy might have been lessened had there been non-contact football for that age. “Chuba wasn’t very big at that time, and I was used to seeing him running track and there’s no contact at all, so, yeah [the contact] was a concern for me,” she said.

In a promising athlete’s career, one process where parental support is essential is when an athlete is being recruited and going through the stages of deciding how and where to take that next step. This was certainly true for Hubbard, who was drawing attention as he starred at Bev Facey Community High School in Sherwood Park. Candace recalled the decision to keep Chuba at home, resisting the clarion call of football academies to the south.

“I didn’t want to send him away where I wasn’t able to watch him. His high school years were very important and so I’m glad that I kept him home and was able to monitor him and he still had his coaches and his football, and all the supports that he needed here which I think is very important to all these children,” she said.

Being in the frozen tundra of Northern Alberta didn’t deter NCAA Division I coaches from calling, sending the Hubbards from one decision to the next: where Chuba would pursue his university career. “It was a lot, and it was a lot just to even get him prepared for university, let alone the football aspect of it, the education part was very important. He had to have certain marks and write certain exams and then the pressure of all the universities calling in,” she said. “To know who to go to and start to try to figure that all out, we were very blessed to have a lot of support in our community, and the school and the coaches, and so we couldn’t have done it without them. You know we did it as a family and so I was lucky to have a lot of support”

Now, after years watching her son play live, she follows him from a distance, as he jets around the U.S. with the Panthers, while Charlotte is a long way from Sherwood Park, it doesn’t seem like that long ago that Chuba was getting set to head south.

“Yeah absolutely, I can’t believe he’s done college and I feel like honestly he just left home. I’m just waiting for him to come back up. You know it’s hard to believe he’s in his own home, he’s now 22 years old, and it’s been a crazy journey and it’s happened very quickly. So, we’re still – I think we’re all still in just, like, shock of what’s really going on here.”

Football Canada thanks you, Candace Hubbard – and all football moms, for all that you do for the sport.

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