When Football Mountie Troy Downton chose Mount Allison, his sights were set on one day becoming the team’s starting quarterback. At only 5’8” he was much shorter than the typical QB, but that didn’t change his focus.

“I came to Mount Allison because they wanted me on the team as a quarterback,” he says. “When I visited, I fell in love with the small town and of course being the #1 undergraduate university in the country helped.”

Originally from Burlington, ON, Downton was introduced to football at a young age. When he was four, he fell off the bleachers at his brother’s football practice — and he didn’t miss a beat. The President of the local football league witnessed the fall and told Downton’s mother he was tough and she should sign him up for football. Soon after he began playing with kids up to three years older.

When he was 13, he started playing quarterback during the summers with the Burlington Stampeders and then at M.M. Robinson High School, where his team went on to win the league championship in his senior year.

“Football is not like any other game,” he says. “My Saturday is a whole different game at quarterback than someone in another position. Everyone looks at the game as physical, but QB is a chess match. It’s also a team game. You need to have a good team as a whole to compete.”

In his third year, Downton got the opportunity to take his first-ever league snap.

“I knew I was never going to be the guy,” he says. “So that moment was really exciting.”

After graduating in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology with a double minor in sociology and women’s and gender studies, Downton decided to give it one more shot and returned for his final year of eligibility.

This year, he got the opportunity to be the guy.

“Being named the starter this year is hard to describe,” he says. “I came back for one more chance to play football and it was exciting. I waited a long time for it and even though the season didn’t turn out how we had hoped, I was happy to be able to finish this way.”

A multi-sport athlete in hockey and baseball, Downton has been highly involved in intramurals on campus and has helped coach the Tantramar Titans football program.

“Being a student-athlete at Mount Allison helped make the transition to university a lot easier,” he says. “You automatically make 80 new friends on the team and each year you add to that.”

Finishing his time at Mount Allison in December, Downton plans to head home to Ontario to work and start the process of applying to the RCMP.