Calgary Stampeders' Grey Cup hopes inspired by teammate lost to senseless tragedy

It’s a morning ritual that helps Osagie Odiase get through the day.

But the Calgary Stampeders defensive back would give anything to make the need for that ritual totally unnecessary. If only he could somehow magically erase the tragic effects of the senseless gun play that ended the life of his teammate and housemate.

A 23-year-old man, a product of the mean streets of Detroit, playing football in Calgary where guns are rare, cut down for no understandable reason.

Every morning before he leaves for practice, Odiase stops by the achingly empty room of Mylan Hicks. A room where a closet light burns day and night as an memorial to a fallen teammate. A room that contains an empty bed covered in football jerseys and a playbook.

“It’s like a little memorial in his room,” says Odiase, a 25-year-old Californian who will play in Sunday’s Grey Cup game. “Every morning before I leave I go to his room and I give a bow and a salute … just to show my respect. We were like brothers.”

While the memory of what happened in September outside a Calgary bar, where Hicks’ attempts at being a peacemaker in a minor disagreement ended up costing him his life, is painful it is also an inspiration to his Stampeder teammates. If they hoist the Grey Cup on Sunday at Toronto’s BMO Field, their first thoughts will not the $16,000 winners’ cheques or their own satisfaction at completing an amazing season that has seen them lose only twice in 19 games.

It will be of Mylan Hicks.

“We want to make this year special and win the Grey Cup and get his mother a ring,” says defensive back Jamar Wall, who now wears jersey No. 31 in honour of his fallen teammate. “We will never forget him.”

None of the other Stampeders will, either. They will all wear his number on their helmets, as they have since the tragedy. His jersey and cleats will have their own locker at BMO, as they have since the tragedy. His name will be featured prominently in the pre-game breakdown.

But no one will remember him more than his former housemate.

He is still haunted by the fact that he wasn’t there that night, wasn’t in his usual place by Hicks’s side.

“Anywhere you saw him, you saw me,” Odiase says. They went everywhere together, including their morning trips to distribute snacks to the homeless and their weekly ritual of taking a homeless person to dinner.

But that night he chose to pass on an invitation to join teammates at a Calgary bar, a decision he regrets now.

“That’s still painful,” he says. “I feel as if I had been there, something would have happened differently.

“It still a (sore) spot for me. I know for a fact it would have been different.”

Odiase lives with it every day, but he says not in a negative way.

“People asked if he wanted to move,” he says. “But I feel him there, so I want to be there. The after-effect, you always miss him, but now we want to live it out in a positive way.”

And that’s one of strange things about the whole story. The close-knit Stampeders have come together even more since the tragedy.

“That could have made or broke a team, but it made us 100 per cent stronger,” says Wall. “Every guy knows what we’re fighting for. Words don’t need to be said … we know what we’re fighting for and we will always continue to fight for him.”

There’s been a new energy since that Sept. 25 incident. The team has lost but one game since Hicks was killed, a meaningless end-of-the-season match in Montreal with star quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell sitting out.

“Once Mylan passed away, everybody came together,” says Odiase. “When you walk in the locker room you can feel the energy. It’s crazy.”

Receiver Marquay McDaniel says the Stamps were numb after the shooting, but that a memorial held at McMahon Stadium and attended by his parents brought them closer together and allowed them to take something positive from it.

The key was Hicks’s mother, Renee Hill. She was a rock during the memorial, says McDaniel, even telling funny stories about her son by the time the event ended.

“Just that strength she showed showed us, we knew we had to play for him, but knowing that she was going to be okay gave us something more to play for,” he says.

Although the 23-year-old defensive back never got off the practice squad, he is still with the team in every way. There was something almost magical when Walls, wearing his fallen teammate’s No. 31 jersey, intercepted a pass in last week’s Western final and ran it in for a touchdown. The score was Calgary’s 31st point that day.

“That really touched me,” Walls says. “I’m a very religious guy and I always felt like he was with us and that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.”

A victory over the underdog Ottawa Redblacks on Sunday will be extra special for the Stampeders. If they win, the first person they will look for is Renee Hill, Hicks’ mother, who will drive to Toronto from Detroit, accompanied by Odiase’s mother.

“I want her last memory in Canada to be something positive and not something negative,” says Wall. “That’s to get her a ring.”