I’m standing on the sidelines of Tim Hortons Field before the Ticats play the Argos in late September. The air is just starting to cool down and the wind picks up, funneling off the mountain and biting through my sweater. I draw in a long, cold breath, and I’m reminded that yes, it’s football season.
I pace the sidelines, absent-mindedly running the Tiger-Cats Snapchat but actually waiting for a chance to interview Lil Utman, a 97-year-old fan waiting field-side. I glance toward where she sits, surrounded by a throng of people. Some are taking pictures and greeting her; others are her family, and they stand in a ring around her. I see the crowd disperse and, seizing my chance, stride quickly over before it can form again. I arrive and drop to my haunches, sinking so I can meet her eyes. Her face turns up to me, and she smiles her welcome. Her eyes are kind. Her hands clutch a signed football in her lap.
I ask if I can interview her and she agrees. But before she can answer any questions, Aaron Crawford jogs off the field and throws his arm around her. Cameras flash.
Crawford and Lil Utman go back a ways. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ long snapper met Utman in the Tiger-Cats Shop at Tim Hortons Field last season. Crawford and Utman chatted, browsed old pictures, and got to know one another. He didn’t expect to be hearing about Utman from his mom a year down the road.
Crawford’s mom was born in Hamilton, Ontario, but now she’s living in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Her church there hosts a jersey Sunday. Donning her Steeltown colours, she went to church and was shocked when she spotted another person in black and gold. A Ticats jersey is a rare thing in Medicine Hat with Calgary, Edmonton, and Regina – all rabid CFL fan bases – such a short drive away. Seeing anything but red or green amongst the pews came as a surprise. Being a social woman, Crawford’s mom walked right up to investigate.
As Crawford explains, that move has backfired in the past.
“She’s made the mistake where she’s gone up to people wearing Steelers colours, and she’s like, ‘Oooh, Hamilton?’ And they’re like, ‘No?’” Crawford laughs.
On this occasion, the colours and the logo were what Crawford’s mom was hoping for.
As it turned out, Crawford’s mom had met Utman, who had made the trip from the GTA to spend time with family in Medicine Hat.
Crawford’s mom got to talking with Utman and she learned that Utman and the Tiger-Cats went further back than expected.
“I would say I’ve been a fan sixty years,” Utman tells me on the sidelines at Tim Hortons Field. “A young boy used to come to our house who liked football. This is when people were just getting TVs. His parents didn’t have one, so he spent all his time at our house watching sports. He brought me to my first football game, I would say sixty years ago. He was sixteen years old at the time. He’s eighty now.”
And it hasn’t been just a fair-weather love affair. Utman has supported the team through thick and thin.
“They’re the only football team I’m going to support. It doesn’t matter whether they win or lose, I’m always going to support them,” she says.
It’s incredible that two women with such close ties with the Tiger-Cats would find themselves chatting in a Medicine Hat church. Crawford’s mom may not be pushing 100, but she has her share of Ticats stories as well.
“My mom had a baseball glove, of all things, signed by Mosca,” said Crawford. “She always told me the story of how she got the autograph and how he was around and they’d see him in the community and little stories like that.”
Crawford remembers a number of stories about his mom’s relationship with football.
“Hamilton was playing Saskatchewan in the Grey Cup and they went into overtime,” recounted Crawford. “My mom was telling my dad during the game, ‘We can’t be late for church. We have church, and we’re going there regardless. Whatever the score is, we’re leaving.’
‘So my dad and another guy friend were standing ready at the door, and my mom is sitting in the chair, and she says, ‘It’s overtime, we can’t leave now!’ When they walked into church, everyone stared at my dad, and my mom got a free pass,” laughs Crawford.
When Crawford learned from his mom that she had spoken to Utman, he arranged to bring Utman to Hamilton and give her the VIP fan experience.
And that’s how she ended up on the sidelines.
Crawford spent more time with Utman than I was able to, fighting the bustle of the field on game day. In his time with her, he learned a lot about what it was like being a fan of the Ticats decades ago.
“They used to huddle around the radio and listen. Her very first Grey Cup party was on this ten-inch TV and they had twenty-something people in the room on this tiny TV,” he said. “Just listening to how they used to do things, the get-togethers, community and how invested the community was with the team, and still is: it was just kind of a moment of awe. Kind of makes everything a little more special to be a part of.”
Fans consume the game differently, and engage with the team in new ways, but at the heart of it, being a fan is the same thing it always was: an unwavering devotion to a team you love.
Utman sits on the sidelines as her favourite player, Emanuel Davis, kneels beside her. Her grin is ear-to-ear as a group of people, myself included, snap a few pictures. Davis returns to the field, and I resume my interview.
I ask her which of her many Tiger-Cats memories is her favourite.
“I really don’t know because I just enjoy it every time. I really don’t have a favourite,” she says.
Then she reconsiders.
“This would be my favourite, let me tell you. Oh, I can’t believe what’s happened to me today. Just wonderful. Just wonderful. And the support is great. The fellas have been great as they come talk to me. Oh, I’m just so thrilled. I probably won’t sleep for a week,” she says.
Before I walk away from Utman, I ask her one last question: who do you think is going to win tonight?
Her voice is confident as she responds:
“Oh, the Tiger-Cats of course. But I’ll love them if they don’t.”