It had always been Patrick Pranger’s goal to come to Canada, but the 23-year-old admits Saskatchewan wasn’t always the first destination he had in mind.
"When you are living in Austria, you just see the West Coast of Canada in commercials, the mountains and all the stuff, and I always wanted to go once to Canada and see this,” Pranger said. “And the first step is Saskatoon now.”
As it turns out, the Edward’s School of Business at the University of Saskatchewan aligned with his career plans, and once Pranger was accepted into the school, he reached out to Huskies head coach Bryce Chapman.
"I took a video in Austria at home, at goalkeeper training, cut it and sent it to him. I cut it myself, put some music in it; it looked spectacular,” he said with a chuckle. “It was some electronic music.”
Was the music in the video what grabbed Chapman’s attention?
“I don't think so,” laughed Pranger.
It wasn’t.
"Anytime there's music I push mute, so that wasn't the go-to for me,” Chapman said, dryly. “When we watched the video, he was very agile, he covered the space well. You could tell he had worked with a goalkeeper coach for a bit, and that gives us some options."
It may be Pranger’s first time in Saskatchewan, but this isn’t his first trip to the Prairies. In 2015, he spent five months working at a grain farm in Manitoba as part of an exchange program.
"[It was] a lot of machine driving, tractor driving, combine driving,” he recalled. “It was awesome, the best time of my life. Canadians are pretty nice, and I had so much fun. We were like a group of four trainees, and spent every weekend together, went out to Winnipeg, worked lots. But it doesn't matter, it was just fun."
Pranger and the Huskies will open the Canada West regular season at home against the Lethbridge Pronghorns on Saturday Aug. 26.
