Jeremy O’Day lingered for a few moments before turning away.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ assistant vice-president of football operations and administration had a front-row seat Friday as the west-side grandstand at historic Mosaic Stadium was taken down.
O’Day spent 12 CFL seasons as an offensive lineman with the CFL’s Roughriders before retiring in 2011 and moving into the team’s front office. For 18 years, he worked at the facility before the Roughriders transferred their base of operations to new Mosaic Stadium in February.
Not surprisingly, O’Day was dealing with his emotions while watching part of his former home collapse Friday.
“
You’re kind of sad in a way because it’s almost like you’re closing a book on something,” said O’Day, 43. “In the same token, you turn your head, look at the new stadium and realize it’s just a new chapter. You’re not really closing the book.
“It’s emotional in that you’re going to look at that space and there’s going to be nothing where the old stadium was. You’re just going to talk about it. When you show people around, you’re going to say, ‘That’s where the old stadium was,’ and there’s nothing there.
“It’s like visiting the house you grew up in. When you go back, you look at that house and you remember all the things that you did in there and all the memories that you had.”
The final game Saskatchewan played at the stadium was Oct. 29, 2016, when it lost 24-6 to the B.C. Lions. Workers have been dismantling the facility since the Roughriders moved into their new home.
Parts of the old stadium were auctioned off, while seats and suites were moved to other locales as part of the Grey Cup Legacy Project.
What’s left of the stadium — where Grey Cup games were played in 1995, 2005 and 2013 — is to be taken down and the area redeveloped. The demolition of the west-side grandstand was the next step.
After watching Friday’s event, O’Day reflected on all the practices and games in which he participated at the stadium, the interactions with teammates in the locker room, and having his three children tearing around the place during their younger years.
For O’Day, the facility simply had an aura.
“There’s something about being in the spot where the all-time greats played,” he said. “We never looked at it like it was as old as it was; we just looked at it as where we played our games and it didn’t really matter what it looked like.”
O’Day’s favourite moment as a player at the stadium was winning the 2007 Labour Day Classic on Kerry Joseph’s 27-yard touchdown run on a quarterback draw with six seconds left in regulation time.
But O’Day’s top moment at the stadium occurred six years later.
“In ’13, we won the Grey Cup at home and I got to stand on the field with my dad,” recalled O’Day, who then was the Roughriders’ assistant general manager. “He was standing there as (league officials) were presenting the team with the trophy. That was a pretty neat moment.”
Steve Mazurak had a few neat moments at the stadium, too. Many of those occurred when the Regina product frequented the stadium as a fan.
“I’d sit in the Rider Rookies (section) like many thousands of others,” recalled Mazurak, now the Roughriders’ vice-president of sales and partnership. “Growing up in a stadium where security wasn’t what it is now, you could easily pick your spot, hop the fence, run across and dive into the throngs of Rider Nation.”
Mazurak played pee wee, high school and junior football at what was then known as Taylor Field before joining the Roughriders in 1973. His greatest football memory at the stadium was created when he was a CFL rookie.
“It was that very first year of being a Roughrider and stepping on that turf, playing my first CFL game and thinking that I had done it,” said Mazurak, 66. “I had made it from the (pee wee) Bombers Business Printers to the Martin Ruby Bears through high school and the Rams. I knew my friends and family were there and they were going to watch Stevie in that first exhibition game.
“Then you put it all out there to see if you really belong. You do your thing, you match yourself up with an all-state All-American or a former NFLer or a great CFLer and you do the job. That’s when you realize in your heart of hearts that you belong in that stadium — and in other stadiums.”
A quarter-century after his playing career with the Roughriders ended, Mazurak was hired to work in the team’s front office. He worked in the bowels of the west-side grandstand from 2005 until the Roughriders moved into the new stadium.
“You didn’t have room for a meeting, there was no real boardroom and yet your sponsors from SaskTel or wherever — who had wonderful leather seats and boardrooms at their offices — wanted to come to the stadium to meet because they might see a player or a coach,” Mazurak said. “They just wanted to be a part of that stadium.
“We lived with that, we understood it and it was fantastic. You’d have four or five people piled into an office that couldn’t fit two, but they just wanted to meet and talk about business in the stadium and nowhere else. It was part of the culture.”
Farewell, old friend.#RiderPride pic.twitter.com/kI5aq60zF1
— Sask. Roughriders (@sskroughriders) October 27, 2017
