From pivot to pilot
Former McMaster quarterback Sparks is now flying with the Snowbirds
While you were looking up at the Snowbirds flying over Hamilton in their perfect diamond formation on the weekend, the guy in backright plane was sneaking a peek or two back down at you. More accurately, at where you were standing.
“There were fleeting moments when flying over Westdale neighbourhood I was able to look down,” Steve Sparks says.
That’s hardly surprising since it wasn’t that long ago the pilot now wearing a red flight suit and wings — Captain Steve Sparks today, officially Snowbird 6 — was wearing maroon and No. 18 while playing quarterback for McMaster just a few thousand feet below.
The 34-year-old had grown up playing Timbits football and spent time with the Steel City Ironmen as he moved up from Dalewood Middle School to Westdale Secondary. Then on to Mac for the 2007 season after transferring from St. Mary’s University out east. And, arriving on campus at a golden age for Marauders QBs.
“Between when Adam Archibald was there and Kyle Quinlan,” he chuckles.
On any list of greatest Mac pivots, those two are going to be near the top. So finding playing time wasn’t easy. But he did. For two seasons, he split duties with Ryan Fantham. Head coach Stef Ptaszek says Sparks wasn’t afraid of anything on the field. The trouble was injuries kept getting in the way.
Remarkably, he never broke a bone. But, he got his first concussion in a game at Ivor Wynne Stadium that he started because Archibald was out with one of his own. Fantham also got one that game. He says the doctors were great and monitored him closely to make sure he didn’t come back before he was healthy. Still, he had a few more before he was done.
But that’s not the real story here. What is, is how does a guy go from lining up under centre to flying with the Snowbirds?
“Good question,” he says.
His dad had been military. Sparks had spent four years on a base in Germany as a kid. Maybe it was seeing the jets there that did it. Even so, he’d never thought about planes as a career until one night he had an epiphany that he wanted to fly.
He moved to Thunder Bay, got his pilot’s licence at Confederation College and caught the bug. Not for commercial airliners like his wife who’s a pilot for Air Canada. No, he wanted jets. Maverick and Goose I-feel-the-need-the-need-forspeed stuff. So he applied to the military and was accepted. And it turned out to be exactly like
Top Gun, right? Wild flight manoeuvres, fast motorcycles and shirtless beach volleyball games?
“I believe that’s probably the perspective people have,” he laughs. For the record, not quite. He trained on a Harvard turboprop. Then on a CF-155 Hawk that could reach supersonic speeds. Each day, a variety of capabilities were tested. Motor abilities, quick decision-making, the ability to process a ton of information at once and the capacity to take constructive criticism. Essentially the same skill set required for a quarterback.
Last year, he tried out for the iconic Snowbirds. Roughly half the squadron turns over each year, but this time only three changes were being made. For two weeks, he was put through every test and situation imaginable.
But he made it.
Why? Simple. He’s really good. Don’t expect him to tell you that, though, since getting a self-congratulatory word out of Sparks is about as difficult as squeezing orange juice out of a TV remote. Any attempt to discuss how cool his job is gets deflected to credit his coaches and teachers for getting him where he is today.
Those would be the same teachers and coaches who were right below him on Sunday afternoon as he flew over Hamilton as part of the team’s morale-boosting Operation Impact tour.
Including over Ron Joyce Stadium, which he helped open.
He glanced to find it. But not for long.
“It is a fleeting moment,” he says. “Because you do have to get back to work.”