Alonzo Addae is fresh off of a solid rookie season with the CFL’s Ottawa Redblacks where he played in each of the Redblacks’ 18 regular season games, making just shy of 30 tackles on the year, well on his way to having a great professional career, but his journey wasn’t that easy to get to this stage of his life. From Pickering, Ontario, Canada, Addae, as a football player had to work extra hard to get to where he wanted to be, and continues to work hard.
He kicked off his football career at St. Mary Catholic Secondary School in Pickering, continued it with the Pickering Dolphins in the OVFL, and crossed the Canada-USA border to play with Peddie School in New Jersey where he got the coaching and exposure to play in the NCAA. In the NCAA, he began playing at the University of New Hampshire, then transferred to play power five football with West Virginia University where he was coached by his cousin Jahmile Addae who played in the NFL. With West Virginia, Alonzo Addae became a name that everyone in the BIG 12 would be familiar with. Over just 23 games played as a Mountaineer, he made 139 tackles, 5 tackles for loss, 10 pass deflections, 1 sack and forced 4 turnovers (2 interceptions, 1 forced fumble, 1 fumble recovery). He had the opportunity to try out in the NFL with the Arizona Cardinals prior to reporting to Ottawa Redblacks training camp.
Just taking a look at the career Addae has had thus far, with stops at around 7 football teams from St. Mary to the Redblacks, there is a lot of knowledge, on and off of the football field that he has to share, and he wants to do exactly that for the next generation of athletes.
During 2020 he launched a company called “Daily Deposits”, which, in his case as an athlete, goes into detail of all of the work he puts in on a daily basis to be the football player you see on the field on game day, but goes much beyond just football and sports. He has goals of helping mentor kids of all different talents, giving them the leadership and resources they need to be successful. One of his first ways of doing that was hosting a first annual Daily Deposits Youth Football Camp on March 13th.
Addae held the camp close to home, in Oshawa, Ontario, where upwards of 30 young football players had the ability to spend the day with Addae and get hands on mentorship from himself and other coaches. The event was a great success and was the first of many.
When talking about his company Daily Deposits to the kids at the camp, Addae gave the message, “Daily Deposits is all about investing in yourselves. You guys are at a very young age right now, you can do anything you want to in this life. Regardless of sport, I’m not even just talking about sport right now, I’m talking about what ever you want to be, what ever you are passionate about, whatever your heart desires, you can go get it but it is going to take work and consistent work. If you put in the work daily it will lead to bigger and better things.”
JZ MEDIA 