Stampeders feel slain teammate with them
Osagie Odiase keeps the light on in Mylan Hicks’ closet. On Hicks’ bed, he has laid out his friend’s Michigan State playbook and neatly folded jersey.
“Every morning before I leave, I go to his room and give a bow and a salute . . . just to show my respect,” Odiase said. “We were close. We were like brothers.”
Hicks was shot and killed outside a Calgary bar in September at the tender age of 23. But his memory is everywhere. It’s in the black No. 31 pin that Odiase wears on his tuque. It’s in the No. 31 jersey the Stampeders will hang in the locker room Sunday before they run onto BMO Field. It’s in the players’ hearts.
“The energy is crazy now,” Odiase said, when asked how Hicks’ death galvanized the Stampeders. “Everybody just came together . . . Everybody knows what we are playing for this year. Obviously the Grey Cup. But we are also playing for No. 31.”
Defensive back Jamar Wall, who switched his jersey number from 29 to 31to honour the late player, ran an interception back for a touchdown in the West final that gave Calgary a 31-0 lead. “It was my first time, making a play, in the number,” Wall said. “Wearing 31. Scoring the 31st point . . . I always feel like he’s with us. If that’s not a sign I don’t know what is.”
Hicks was in his first CFL season and on Calgary’s practice roster and was celebrating with teammates following a home win over Winnipeg when he was shot during an altercation at a Calgary nightclub.
A 19-year-old man was charged with second-degree murder.
Odiase wasn’t with Hicks that night, one of the rare times they weren’t together. Odiase, a defensive back in his first season with the Stampeders, first met Hicks at a football free agent camp in Florida. It was pure luck that brought them both to Calgary, where they wound up sharing a downtown home.
“We were very close. Anywhere you saw me, you saw him. Anywhere you saw him, you saw me,” Odiase said. “In the beginning people were asking ‘Do you want to move out of the house?’ I was like ‘No, I still kind of feel him in there. Why run away from it? If I feel him, I want to be there still.’”
Odiase said he and Hicks took to feeding homeless people in Calgary. It was Hicks’ idea. They would fill their pockets with Rice Krispies treats and fruit snacks, and hand them out on their way to practice. On Sundays, the players would find a homeless man and treat him to dinner. “I still do that,” Odiase said.
The 25-year-old said he speaks daily to Hicks’ mom Renee Hill, who is coming from Detroit to watch Sunday’s Grey Cup game. Jerome Messam was with Hicks the night he was murdered.
“It’s been tough, but we’ve stuck together, we definitely lean on each other as teammates,” the Brampton running back said. “Mylan was like a little brother to me. Think about him every day. We don’t let his life be in vain.”