In business, as in his Gaels tenure, Craig Spear is all about staking out unclaimed territory.
Exactly 10 years ago, Spear was a record-setting all-Canadian receiver on a Queen's team which shook up the OUA with a passing offence led by strong-armed Tom Denison. Now Spear is making headway in the competitive fitness industry as owner and operator of Momentum Fitness, a "boutique gym" he opened in Dundas, Ont., in 2011.
"It's been two busy but pretty successful years," says Spear, 33, one of four Gaels to have gained 1,000 receiving yards in a regular season. "The market's certainly saturated and it's only getting even more saturated. But I heard a great quote a long time ago that I still piggyback off – 'if you're worrying about your competition then you're not paying attention to your customers.' We try to play off that. Our clientele isn't the traditional gym goer, it's about high-end equipment and functional conditioning. We kind of look at what the traditional gyms are doing and try to do the opposite."
Spear sees a parallel between trying to compete with national chains and how his generation of Gaels went against the grain in the OUA, which was a run-first league before Queen's and Ottawa arrived in 2001.
"I was always a stickler for preparation and organization when I was at Queen's, as well as thinking outside the box," says Spear. "We had a really innovative offence that Coach Sheahan put in place. And here, we're in such a saturated market that we always have to be at the forefront. It's kind of given me that perspective – how can you change things from how they're currently being done? The last thing, that's most important, is teamwork. We've got a culture that really promotes that."
Spear, like current slotback Justin Chapdelaine, was quarterback during his first two seasons. His move to receiver following Denison's arrival coincided with a turnaround that got the Gaels back on the map and helped them gain unwavering support.
"It was interesting to see how fast it evolved, how fast we became successful," says Spear, who later played in the CFL for Hamilton and Calgary. "We went from 1-7 to 5-3 to 7-1 over three years [from 2000 to '02]. We had some great rivalries with Western and Mac that have continued over the past 10 years.
"We were ahead of the curve in terms of throwing the ball," says Spear, who caught a CIS-record 63 passes in '03 (now fifth-best all time) and led the country with an even 1,000 yards (now fourth-best in Queen's history). "Coach Sheahan was very good with communicating to the players in a way that helped us pick it up really fast. And then you get a quarterback like Tom Denison, which doesn't hurt."
Spear was at the centre of two defining moments of the early Sheahan years. In 2000, as the rookie QB, he accounted for five TDs in a 41-40 home win over nationally ranked Western that prevented a winless season. Three years later, McMaster carried a 28-game conference unbeaten streak into a Top 5 tilt at Richardson. Queen's went up late on a Denison-to-Spear 99-yard pass-and-run with fewer than 30 seconds left. Current Olympic bobsledder Jesse Lumsden took the ensuing kickoff 88 yards to the house to force overtime, where Mac won on a field goal.
"Steve Milton, who's a well-known sportswriter here in Hamilton, still talks about that as being one of the best football games he's ever seen," Spears says. "It sort of defined our season. We ended up playing Laurier in the second round of the playoffs and they had a really good system for containing our offence [and ousted Queen's 36-33 in double overtime]. Had we beaten Mac, we would have faced Windsor in the semifinal and gone to the Yates Cup."
Still, the thrill was in the challenge of taking on the big guys, just like in Spear's current line of work.
"Even though we lost, it was very exciting."
Neate Sager, Arts '00, writes for Yahoo! Canada Sports.
