Elic Ayomanor's journey from Canada to the NFL draft
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Adam Rittenberg
Just about everyone in Elic Ayomanor’s life remembers where they were on the night of Oct. 13, 2023.
The wide receiver from Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada — now an NFL draft prospect — had waited more than a year for his breakthrough at Stanford. That night, he would face Colorado and Travis Hunter, the two-way star who would win the Heisman Trophy the following season.
At halftime, Stanford trailed 29-0 and Ayomanor had zero receptions. Then, something magical happened. After Stanford got on the board and forced a Colorado punt, Ayomanor caught a quick in-route, cut upfield and ran 97 yards for a touchdown. Following another Colorado punt, Ayomanor caught a back-shoulder pass in front of a bewildered Hunter and sliced across the field for a 60-yard score.
The ball kept going to Ayomanor, and Stanford kept scoring. The Cardinal sent the game to overtime, then extended it after Ayomanor’s 30-yard touchdown. Stanford prevailed 46-43 in the second overtime, completing the largest comeback in team history.
Ayomanor’s final stat line: 13 receptions, 294 yards, three touchdowns. He set a Stanford single-game receiving yards record and came within 51 yards of the Pac-12 mark.
“I remember being really tired because of the altitude,” Ayomanor told ESPN. “Like, after every single play, I’m coming back to the sideline and I’m like, ‘Where’s the oxygen? Whoever has the oxygen, let me know right now, because I need it.'”
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The performance reached the group of people who helped Ayomanor get to the big stage.
Kwame Osei, who helped train Ayomanor in Canada, watched the game from a bar at the Las Vegas airport.
“I literally got up, I’m screaming, I’m cheering,” Osei said. “I was filled with joy. I had tears in my eyes, just because I knew that this is it, this is the moment that’s going to set him up for the next stage.”
Justin Dillon, the scout who had helped recruit Ayomanor to the U.S., watched in an Ontario bar that became glued to an American college football game.
“The majority of these people, they didn’t understand,” Dillon said. “I kept saying, ‘He’s doing this against [who] they say is the best athlete in the NCAA.'”
This was the culmination of an odyssey that began in a place where hockey rules. It continued with Canadian All-Star teams and prep schools in New Jersey and Massachusetts and, finally, Stanford.
Canada has produced NFL players before. Thirty players from Canada appeared in an NFL game last season. Recent draft picks include John Metchie III, Chase and Sydney Brown, Chuba Hubbard, Jevon Holland and Chase Claypool. In the Canadian Football League, Doug Flute won league MVP multiple times and parlayed it into an NFL career. But those around Ayomanor, a potential Day 2 pick next month, think he has a chance to be special — and help pave the path for those after him.
“Elic can be the face for football in Canada,” Dillon said.
Although Ayomanor’s mother, Pam Weiterman, didn’t push her kids into sports, she encouraged them, with a caveat: If you start an activity, you need to finish it. Elic cried through his first time in hockey because he hated skating. He switched to football at 13 and was hooked.
Osei, a former CFL player who has coached at multiple levels in Canada, first heard about Ayomanor while coaching receivers for Football Alberta’s under-16 team in 2018. When he arrived in Edmonton for training, everyone was buzzing about the receiver from Medicine Hat.
“I saw right away that he was a baller,” Osei said. “He was faster than the other kids, he had soft hands, jumped out of the gym. He just looked the part.”
Ayomanor’s inquisitiveness convinced Osei he could have a different type of trajectory.
“Everything I taught him, he really soaked in, and just asked the next question,” Osei said. “… What sets the good from the great apart is the appetite to learn more.”
Ayomanor shined as Team Alberta won the Western Challenge, a competition against teams from other provinces, scoring three touchdowns in the third quarter of the championship against Manitoba. Osei pulled Ayomanor aside afterward, and Ayomanor told him he wanted to play in the NFL. When Osei told Ayomanor that it could mean finishing high school in the U.S. to generate recruiting attention, the 15-year-old didn’t flinch.
“Our country is hockey,” Dillon said. “The best football players play in the U.S., and they have schools out there that are good academic schools that will facilitate international kids. So why are we not using this to help and make it easier for NCAA schools to recruit you?”
Weiterman didn’t know anything about the path to major American college football or the NFL. Osei contacted Dillon, whose 730 Scouting service helps place top Canadian players with U.S. high schools. A week after the Western Challenge, Dillon called Weiterman and made his case.
The opposing argument came via a “six-page email” Weiterman received from members of the Alberta football community outlining why Ayomanor should stay in Canada. Promising Canadian players had moved directly from their home country to major college programs.
“I’ve been telling him for years to think outside the box,” Weiterman said of allowing her son to go to the U.S. “No parent wants to miss any years of their kid’s life, but you will sacrifice that if it’s for the betterment of that child. You want them to follow their dreams.”
In 2019, then 16-year-old Ayomanor enrolled at The Peddie School in New Jersey, where Metchie played. Ayomanor played the first half of his sophomore season before breaking his collarbone. After a coaching change, he transferred to Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts, another prep school. Then, COVID-19 wiped out his junior season.
He didn’t let the time go to waste, though. He tried to master every receiver spot, even training with a 5-foot-8 teammate.
“That’s extremely unusual for a high school kid to lean in and say, ‘I want to do the things maybe I’m not as good at right now,'” Deerfield coach Brian Barbato said. “He’s not just going to sit there and catch deep balls because that’s what he does best. He was a sponge.”
Ayomanor was set to play in 2021, but sustained a season-ending knee injury in Deerfield’s second game. His American football odyssey had yielded nine games over three years.
“I had to go to a few camps and post some practice film,” he said. “It was fun. I love competing, so I was super happy and eager to go wherever I had to go to compete and prove my worth.”
Although Ayomanor lacked game film, he had a workout video where he looked the part of a Power 4 recruit.
Ayomanor had more than 20 offers by late spring of 2021, but he wanted to hear from his dream school: Stanford. Dillon reached out to Bobby Kennedy, then Stanford’s wide receivers coach, who had coached Tevaun Smith, another of Dillon’s Canadian prospects, while at Iowa. Kennedy said he started digging into Ayomanor’s background and liked what he saw, even with limited film.
Kennedy wanted to extend an offer, but then-Stanford coach David Shaw required Ayomanor to attend the team’s camp. Kennedy worried about whether a player with offers from Notre Dame, Tennessee and others would want to do that.
“He goes ‘Coach, I’ll come to camp. If that’s what I need to earn a scholarship at Stanford, then I’ll do it,'” Kennedy recalled.
About 10 minutes into Ayomanor’s workout at Stanford, Shaw approached Kennedy with the scholarship green light.
His journey from Medicine Hat to major college football was complete, but the wait to showcase his talents would continue. He redshirted his freshman season in 2022 after tearing his meniscus, and began the fall of 2023 practicing with a brace on his knee.
It would come off the week of the Colorado game.
Weiterman usually watches Ayomanor’s games alone. She gets too worked up.
By halftime of the Colorado game, she started getting ready for bed. She came downstairs in her pajamas for the third quarter and saw Ayomanor streaking across the TV. Her phone began blowing up with every big catch and touchdown.
She didn’t get to bed until 4 a.m., after speaking with her son.
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Stanford’s Elic Ayomanor makes 97-yard house call
Elic Ayomanor takes advantage of Colorado’s defensive miscue and takes the ball 97 yards to the house for a Stanford TD.
“I was just like, ‘You showed them, Elic. This was your day, this was your time,'” Weiterman said. “And what better day? Like, prime time! It was in his cards, it had to be in his cards.”
Ayomanor’s breakout game lit a spark. Two weeks later, he had 146 receiving yards against Washington and, later in the season, put up 122 yards against No. 12 Oregon State and 116 against Notre Dame. He finished with 1,013 yards on 62 receptions, and earned honorable mention all-league honors. He received the Jon Cornish Trophy, given to the top Canadian college football player.
This past season, Ayomanor had similar numbers — 63 receptions, 831 yards, six touchdowns — and was a second-team All-ACC selection. Stanford once again missed the postseason, and after only 24 college games, he elected to enter the NFL draft.
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“For me to decide to go to the NFL, it’s similar to the reason why I left my hometown in the first place,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to pursue more difficult and challenging environments, so I can grow faster.”
The 6-foot-2 Ayomanor has spent the past few months immersed in NFL draft prep. He had solid numbers at the combine earlier this month, running a 4.44-second 40-yard dash and putting up a 38.5-inch vertical, which ranked seventh among all wideouts in the class. Scouts believe he has the ability to see early playing time as a rookie. In ESPN analyst Matt Miller’s recent seven-round mock draft, Ayomanor was projected to the New England Patriots at No. 69 overall.
Wherever Ayomanor lands it will be the next mile marker on his journey and a destination many around him knew he was capable of.
As Dillon left the bar in Ontario well after midnight the night of the Colorado game, he thought to himself, “You’re going to the NFL, young man. You punched your ticket.”
