A touching moment for the Ravens
Hero kicker Passaglia and Terry Fox teammates turn to time-honoured pre-game ritual
Devin Passaglia got to live out his dream on the final play of his high school football career.
“I definitely call that every kicker’s fantasy,” the 5-foot-8, 150-pound senior said Saturday night after his 29-yard overtime field goal carried the Terry Fox Ravens to a 17-14 win over Vancouver’s Notre Dame Jugglers in one of the most dramatic Subway Bowl B.C. triple-A championship finals this province has ever seen.
“It’s something I’ve dreamt about. And when it’s time, you have to seize the opportunity. You have to take it. But everybody had to play their part in order for something like that to happen.”
In a larger context, the story behind the winning kick is, in part, the story of a team inspired by their school’s namesake and former graduate, the late Terry Fox.
“We have a tradition before every game,” Ravens head coach Martin McDonnell said on Monday. “While I go around back and get the bus, the kids get their gear and then I drive around front. Every player and every coach touches the statue of Terry Fox in front of our school before they get on.
“And it’s a unique statue of Terry, very easy to touch. The girl who designed it set it at ground level because Terry wouldn’t have ever wanted to be put up on a pedestal.” Passaglia, too. Patient and understanding, he’s ready to answer the inevitable question about his famous surname. After all, he is a kicker just like one of the game’s greatest ever, former B.C. Lions superstar Lui Passaglia.
“He is my dad’s cousin, so I guess we’re second cousins,” Passaglia said. “But I’ve only met him a few times. I can remember once, when I was really young, I went over to his house and he talked to me a bit about kicking.”
That’s one of the greatest things about high school sports, the ties between families and schools.
Lui Passaglia was a star at Notre Dame, and his twin sons Chris and Colby each played their high school football at Terry Fox.
The other thing? Witnessing a moment you know will stay with that student-athlete the rest of his life.
In fact, when Passaglia kicked the walk-off winner Saturday, I couldn’t help but think back to March of 2012, when another equally stunning moment happened to a Terry Fox athlete.
With time ticking down in the B.C. senior boys triple-A basketball championship final at the Langley Events Centre, Ravens’ senior guard Jesse Crookes took a pass, a couple of dribbles and hit a clutch 10-foot jumper with about two seconds left to lift the Ravens past Walnut Grove 75-74.
Both were moments where time seemed to stand still.
What Crookes said to me that night was so similar to what Passaglia said to me Saturday: “I have dreamt about hitting that shot my entire life,” Crookes said. “It just feels so amazing.”
Back in 2012, the basketball Ravens were honouring the same traditions as their football brethren, taking a miniature statue of Terry Fox out of a bag at their bench, and touching it liberally for inspiration down the fourth quarter’s stretch drive.
Just like four seasons ago, the football Ravens of 2016 may well have thought fate was on their side when lineman Adam Tennent stripped the ball from the Jugglers on the first possession of overtime.
The stage was set. And after Matt Shuen snapped, Jaden Shanley held and Passaglia kicked, pandemonium ensued.
It was a game no one deserved to lose, but one in which somebody would be given a chance to become the hero.
“I don’t like to believe in fate,” Passaglia, an academic all-star, said after the stadium crowds had departed. “I believe you create your own fate, and that’s what we all did. We fought for it. We got an opportunity. And we seized it.”
That’s something that Terry Fox himself would wholeheartedly agree with.