Memorial service helps Stamps heal
Players try to prepare for Ticats as they continue to grieve Mylan Hicks
There’s no tried and tested formula for helping with what the Stampeders are going through.
The players need time to grieve following the senseless killing of teammate Mylan Hicks last weekend outside the Marquee Beer Market, and while the organization is doing everything in its power to help them with that process, it’s going to be a long one.
But one thing seems clear. The Stampeders are in this together and they are leaning on one another to help get through this difficult time.
“We’re just all learning,” said Stampeders head coach Dave Dickenson. “We’re not really sure how to react, so we’re all just in that mode.
“For me, I like being around the guys and I’m hoping they like the same.”
To a man, the players and coaches describe the team as a family, and the organization has been hammering home the message that there is support available, both professionally and within the locker-room.
On Thursday, the team held a private memorial service at McMahon Stadium, where the team’s chaplain spoke, as well as players and members of Hicks’ family.
While the team chose to keep details of the service private, Dickenson said the team simply wanted to honour the man they’d come to know during Hicks’ season in Calgary.
“For us, it’ll be good to, I don’t know if closure is the right word, but give him his due as a team,” Dickenson said.
“I think it’s the right thing to do and I’m glad the organization decided to do it.”
With a game to play against the Tiger-Cats in Hamilton on Saturday afternoon, the Stamps have had no choice but to focus on the task at hand this week and begin preparing for the next game.
At first glance, that might be the last thing that the grieving players would want to do, but Stampeders running back Jerome Messam said that’s not the case.
Messam was with Hicks on Saturday night at the Marquee Nightclub and has been understandably hurting in the days since, but being around his teammates has been one of the few things that has offered him comfort.
“(I am) still replaying the incident over and over, but the team’s been doing a good job of giving us people to speak to and guys have been sticking together and leaning on each other,” Messam said.
“I think that’s the most important thing for us, to not be secluded and kinda hide away, but to lean on your brothers and be in the group.”
That message is being reinforced from every corner of the Stampeders organization, and while playing football may have been secondary in the team’s thoughts this week, there’s an argument to be made that going on the road might be the best thing for the team this weekend.
“It is good sometimes to be on the road as well, less distractions,” Dickenson said. “Everything’s different, but I’m anxious to travel together as a group and play a football game. It’s like we said, maybe not a top priority but we understand that our team needs to be ready and live our lives.
“We will honour Mylan as a group this afternoon, but we will also just try to make sure we go out there and do everything we can to play our game.”