Lincoln-Way West graduate Michael Sneed thought he was done with football.
After his senior season at NCAA Division III Carthage, the 6-foot-4, 285-pound defensive end went to Whitewater, Wisconsin for a pro day camp in March. He heard nothing after a week.
“I was ready to hang up the cleats and transition into the real world,” Sneed said. “I was done.”
But the real world is going to have to wait.
Sneed is playing in the Canadian Junior Football League for the Okanagan Sun.
There might be an opportunity for him to play next season in the Canadian Football League. With the CFL holding camps, Sun coaches have told him that he could be ready to step up.
“We have a mix of coaches and they tell me I am CFL talented,” Sneed said. “The CFL only takes one or two players from the team each year. But being a 285-pound end is pretty striking up here.
“These guys don’t get that very often. Everybody on the coaching staff is super supportive of that path for me.”
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How he got to Okanagan was unique.
After thinking his career was over, Sneed was ready to start taking the Law School Admission Test. He was looking for law schools to apply to, with an end game of someday becoming an attorney and handling student-athletes with NIL contracts.
But out of the blue, he heard from the Sun and football was back in the picture.
“The head coach, Travis Miller, reached out to me and had seen my film through a friend,” Sneed said. “He was told, ‘Hey, you should check this kid’s film out.’ He offered me a pretty good deal.”
It has been an eye-opening experience after Sneed admitted going into the situation blind.
“It’s unreal,” Sneed said. “It’s so strange how this new opportunity came up and how things like this work. I didn’t even know this league even existed in the first place.
“I got up here and there’s a fan base, and the players are awesome people and the coaches are great people. It’s such a cool experience to see that other countries take football this seriously.”
The season opened in July, shortly after he signed, and he’s enjoying the ride.
“I am shocked to see how the towns that host these CJFL teams are into football,” Sneed said. “We’ve had crowd of 3,000 or 3,200 fans. The stadiums aren’t all that big, but one of our teams in the conference plays in the professional rugby stadium and they draw a pretty good crowd.”
Sneed, a New Lenox native, opened his football career with the New Lenox Mustangs. When he played at Lincoln-Way West, he also wrestled and was a state qualifier at 220 pounds in 2022.
He began to blossom on the football field at Carthage, where he played 38 games and racked up 106 tackles, including 23 1/2 for losses, and eight sacks.
Lincoln-Way West coach Luke Lokanc pointed out that many athletes develop well in their college years and he has enjoyed watching Sneed’s progress at Carthage.
“He was your typical high school defensive lineman, had a great senior year for us and was a hard worker,” Lokanc said of Sneed. “But when he got to college, he kept developing like a lot of kids do after high school.
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“He grew a little bit. He got stronger. He became a better football player throughout those four years. In his last two or three years in college, he had unbelievable seasons.”
Jeff Vorva is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.