NU Graduate Lirim Hajrullahu Kicks Championship-winning Field Goal for Toronto Argonauts
On Sunday, Nov. 26, 2017, Lirim Hajrullahu, MBA’17, experienced a moment of déjà vu. He was standing 32 yards away from the goal posts at TD Place Stadium in Ottawa, Ontario, with 49 seconds left in the Canadian Football League’s 105th Grey Cup match against the Calgary Stampeders. Seven years earlier, he had stood in nearly the same place on that same field during the Yates Cup National Semi-Finals game, when his last-second field goal earned the Western University Mustangs a place in the finals.
“To me, it seemed as if this had happened before,” he said, “so I knew as long as I could get a good snap and hold on a cold and snowy day, I would make the field goal because I had played that action in my head many times before.”
His mental preparation served him well— Hajrullahu’s field goal earned the underdog Toronto Argonauts a 27-24 victory over the Calgary Stampeders.