Ticats Return to Guelph Where one of their Greatest Stories Was Told

For those who were there– and every couple of weeks there were more than 13,000 of us–it’s not just a place name.

It’s a state of mind; a memory collage; a collective lived experience that has no parallel in Hamilton sport, and arguably in Canadian sport.

Guelph.

The Ticats will be at Alumni Stadium at the University of Guelph tomorrow night to play the Toronto Argonauts, who hold their three-week training camp there and, ergo, are the home team.

But for an entire season back in 2013 that stadium, looking much different than it does today, was the Ticats “home” for the entire CFL season.

There are migrating butterflies which don’t travel as much in a season as the Ticats had to in 2013 while old Ivor Wynne Stadium was being torn down to make room for construction of the Pan Am Games Stadium—now known as Tim Hortons Field—on the same piece of east-end property. It had taken an 11^th-hour compromise to ensure Hamilton would indeed have a new stadium, and there were all kinds of negotiations and contracts which dealt with covering the absurd extra expenses it was all going to cost the Ticats.

The Cats had hoped to play games at McMaster, and did arrange to practice there all year, but that never got over the finish line and, eventually, the team decided to play ‘home’ games in Guelph with the exception of Touchdown Atlantic, which they hosted in Moncton.

Newly-arrived head coach Kent Austin came up with the idea of renovating part of the basement of the downtown corporate head offices on Jarvis Street into a locker room with training and medical facilities. City buses were rented to take the players–dressed in their full gear–to the practices at Mac and back again. Media interviews were conducted in a cramped lower foyer at those headquarters.

With the team coming off missing the playoffs in the farewell season to Ivor Wynne and with lingering rancor of the city-dividing debates on where to put the new building, it looked like 2013 would be chaos in a bottle.

It turned out to be anything but helter-skelter despite every step, every moment, having elements of hope, guesswork and makeshift. But the Ticats management and its staff were young, innovative and tireless and, in hindsight, that 2013 year became a turning point in franchise history. A team which in the 21^st Century had missed the playoffs seven times and hadn’t reached the Grey Cup, has made the playoffs in nine of the 10 seasons since then and gone to the Grey Cup four times; although without hoisting Earl Grey’s Battered Beaker.

Those daily bus rides turned into team-bonding sessions, as did the very idea of dressing in company headquarters. Austin was the philosophical architect of that attitude, refusing to countenance any “oh poor us” or “circle the wagons” or “us against the world” comments from his players, figuring anyone who looked for excuses in that, would look for them on the field.

He had the players not only accept but embrace their practice situation and also their home-game situation, for which the bus rides were longer, the weather was way worse. It was not only the “Guelph Season” it was the Monsoon Season, it seemed, in the unique weather pocket around the Royal City.

The team added extra seating at Alumni Stadium, to get capacity to just over 13,000; they built tents along the top of those auxiliary stands to house media, scouts, and private boxes.

Game-day locker rooms were essentially portables, sitting atop a short but steep hill which led up from the end zone, allowing zealous fans to be within arm’s reach of their favourite team –and of the opponents –as they came on and off the field. Often that hill was as slick as a water slide from the frequent inclement weather, which just added to the intimate experience.

And right across the road in the parking lot of the Cutten Fields golf course, there was always a great tailgate party, often centred around the family compound of Ticat receiver Andy Fantuz.

Guelph embraced the Ticats and some part of it still does.

A couple of weeks ago, Simoni Lawrence and I were invited to appear at the Guelph Sports Celebrity Dinner and a big chunk of the audience there approached Lawrence with their still-vibrant memories of that season, many of which included him. It was his first season in black and gold, and Jeremiah Masoli’s too, as they came over from Edmonton in the Ticats’ best trade of this century.

The weather was frequently insane; cold or very wet or very windy and sometimes all three. And the season, with a new coaching staff and a bunch of new players, could have spiralled into a disaster. Started out that way, too, with losses in two of the first three home games and four of the first five overall. But the Ticats rallied to win nine of their last 13 games and lost just once more at home.

A week after getting demolished in Montreal and looking like they would finish third, they rallied to beat the Als in the season’s penultimate game to guarantee themselves homefield in the East semifinal against the same Alouettes. In that one, they rallied to win in overtime, somehow marching 97 yards into the teeth of an arctic gale, using two quarterbacks –Henry Burris and Dan LeFevour—and twice deciding against game-tying field goals to successfully go for it on third down, including LeFevour’s game-winning two-yard run.

Then they went into Toronto and beat the defending champion Argos—coached by current Ticat head coach Scott Milanovich—to reach the Grey Cup.

I’ve said many times that if that same season had happened south of the border it would have spawned a dozen Hallmark movies and a bunch of documentaries, created some Senate candidates and had a hamburger chain named after it. The only thing close in the U.S. in modern times was the 2002  Chicago Bears while Soldiers Field was being renovated , but they didn’t have to change from their normal practice field and dressing rooms all season, and just played their eight games on the road at the University of Illinois. They responded badly, going from division champions to 4-12.

Oddly, Henry Burris was on both the 2002 Bears and 2013 Ticats and he and I have agreed many times that the Guelph Cats are one of the most under-appreciated stories in sports history.

With Lawrence retiring earlier this year and 2013 Ticat Joel Figueroa injured, there will be no Ticat in uniform Friday night who was part of the “Guelph Year.”

But on Sept. 28, 2013, in the only contest the Ticats lost in their final nine games at Alumni Stadium, Bo Levi Mitchell was dressed in Calgary Stampeders colours as the No. 3 quarterback. It was the season before he became the starter and set all kinds of league and franchise records.

“I came from a big high school, right?, so my entire football career I had a lot of fans in the stands,” Mitchell said this morning.  “Going from Texas, to college football in the States, then I came up here and in my mind I’m thinking, ‘Professional football, I wonder how many fans are going to be there?’ and our first game in Calgary there are so many fans I’m thinking ‘Wow’. Then I hear we’re playing a game at a university.

“I thought I was going to be underwhelmed by it. But the stands were packed and it just reminded you of an amazing high school game where it felt like there should be a band playing, a student section.

“I do remember that game and I wish I got to play more in it. I think the cool thing about it (tomorrow night) is it’ll bring guys back to where their roots are. I think the Touchdown Atlantic game has the same vitality; it’s a really cool awesome thought that you get to play in front of different people in different spots.

“I remember, that year, walking from the portables. Getting dressed in there and our bags just on the ground. We were just sitting down on the ground, sweating because it was hot as heck inside those portables. Then you’re walking through dirt and gravel to get down to the stadium. It felt like that at halftime they were going to bring out the oranges…there you go, there’s your halftime snack.”

Kevin Glenn was the winning quarterback for the Stampeders, but it was also the week that two of CFL’s all-time great receivers, Luke Tasker and Speedy Banks, joined the Ticats.

Tomorrow night, Mitchell likely won’t see any action but will be on the sidelines to help Taylor Powell and his backups Kevin Thomson and Harrison Frost. You can hear him on that topic on Ticats Today and also hear full interviews with Milanovich, Powell, Robert Panabaker who will start at safety, and returner/cornerback Lawrence Woods III.

It’s an important game against the Argos because the team has to get down to its regular-season roster and will make final cuts on Saturday. The only other time the Ticats have played in Guelph since the Year of the Nomads was two springs back when they also were hosted by the Argos.

Woods made the team in the final half of that game, with an interception and a long run back so he is naturally, looking forward to his return.

“It definitely holds a special place in my heart,” Woods says. “I tell all the guys that are on the cusp, just like I was, ‘This is where I made my position. This is where I made my mark. I want you guys to come out here and give it everything.

“You want to get that starting position, but you have to go out and bust your butt on special teams to show everybody that you can do what you can do.”