Brayden Lenius knows that his story isn’t always the easiest to tell or hear.
It includes plenty of pain and heartbreak while also evoking unsettling memories of a time in the history of his favourite sport when Black players encountered racial barriers.
But the game has progressed and, inspirationally, Lenius has persevered to the point where he is a valued member of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, on and off the field.
The 26-year-old receiver has spent a significant portion of the off-season in Saskatchewan, visiting schools and relating his story to students in the hope that they can benefit from his experiences and perspective.
“I tell the kids that everything happens for a reason,” Lenius says. “I’m candid with them. I tell them, ‘This is who I am today — because of this.’
“Life deals its own cards that we can’t control. We can only control what is in our own capacity.
“I don’t always get too deep. Whether I really open up depends on the age of the kids.”
If the kids are older, or especially inquisitive, Lenius will be more expansive.
“Kids will ask about certain things, like the tattoo behind my ear,” he continues. “It says HOPE, which is an acronym for ‘Hold On, Pain Ends.’
“My sister (Marea) told me that when my dad passed. That is something that really stuck with me and got me through it.”
Lenius is the son of Troy Dickey, who played in one Canadian Football League game with the Roughriders in 1995.
While with the Green and White, Dickey met Shauna Lenius. Brayden’s mom is a former Riffel Royals basketball standout who went on to play with the University of Regina Cougars.
Brayden Lenius with his mother, Shauna Lenius
Before joining the Roughriders, Dickey played NCAA football for the University of Arizona Wildcats.
His time at Arizona was highlighted by a stellar performance in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1, 1994, when he caught two touchdown passes to lead the 16th-ranked Wildcats to a 29-0 upset victory over the 10th-seeded University of Miami Hurricanes at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz.
Nearly 14 years later, the Fiesta Bowl came calling once again for Dickey, who in late December of 2017 travelled to Arizona to watch Brayden play for the University of Washington Huskies against the Penn State Nittany Lions.
Shortly after arriving in Phoenix, where he was met at the airport by Brayden, Dickey suffered a major stroke that proved to be fatal. He was 46 years old.
“Two or three nights before the game, we had a great dinner,” Lenius recalls. “That’s when him and I started getting closer and he started getting back into my life.
“We had a great dinner. We were leaving the restaurant and we’re in the car. I’m driving and him and I are singing our song during the ride to the hotel.
“Then he starts mumbling his words. His wife is like, ‘Are you falling asleep?’ Then he really started slurring his words. My ex-girlfriend, who is a nurse, said, ‘He’s having a stroke right now.’
“We pulled over and he said, ‘I love you, son.’ We went right to the hospital and he had an aneurysm during the surgery.”
Lenius can look back on that time — as tragic as it was — and derive solace from the fact that he was with his dad. He was able to talk to him and hug him.
And then, not long after his father was placed in a medically induced coma, Lenius played in the Fiesta Bowl — once a showcase for the talents of Troy Dickey.
“For that game, I switched my last name to ‘DICKEY’ on my jersey,” Lenius says. “I did that to honour him. We almost won that game.
“When I look back, it’s crazy stuff that I went through, but that’s why I am who I am today.”
Another foundational figure is Lenius’s grandfather, Eldridge Dickey — the first African-American quarterback to be drafted in the first round by a National Football League or American Football League team.
After starring at Tennessee State, Dickey was chosen 25th overall by the Oakland Raiders in the 1968 NFL-AFL draft. Oakland’s second-rounder that year was the University of Alabama Crimson Tide’s Ken Stabler, who would quarterback the Raiders to a Super Bowl victory in 1977.
Even though Dickey was a first-round choice, he was never used as a quarterback by the Raiders. He was instead deployed as a receiver and punt returner.
While Dickey was becoming accustomed to a new position, the Denver Broncos’ Marlin Briscoe in 1968 became the first Black starting quarterback in NFL or AFL history.
Even though 14 of Briscoe’s 224 passes produced a touchdown in 1968, the remainder of his football career — which lasted until 1976 — was spent as a receiver.
In fact, Briscoe was a member of the AFL’s Buffalo Bills when James Harris — pro football’s second Black starting quarterback — played for them in 1969.
The third Black starter, Joe Gilliam, saw front-line duty with the Pittsburgh Steelers for one game in 1973 and six more contests in 1974.
It was such a breakthrough that Gilliam was featured on the cover of the Sept. 23, 1974 edition of Sports Illustrated. The headline: PITTSBURGH’S BLACK QUARTERBACK.
Gilliam had followed Eldridge Dickey as a starting signal-caller at Tennessee State.
Sadly, both of them would pass away prematurely in 2000. Gilliam was four days shy of 50 when a cocaine overdose took his life on Christmas Day.
Dickey was only 54 when he suffered a fatal stroke on May 22, 2000. Brayden was only 3 ½ at the time.
“I don’t remember it, but he got to see me and hold me,” Lenius says. “I spent a couple of Christmases there as a young kid, so he got to see his grandson.
“Him and dad passed the same way. It’s such a shame.”
With every step, Lenius pays homage to his grandfather. A photo of Eldridge Dickey is tattooed on Lenius’s right leg, along with the word “LEGENDARY.”
“His story is kind of what paved the way for African-Americans now (at quarterback),” Lenius says. “Obviously, he didn’t break the mould right away, but he started it. For him to be drafted in the first round, that broke the barrier right off the bat. That broke the barrier for generations to come.
“Even though I didn’t know him, I’m playing for him. Without his sacrifice, I wouldn’t be here.”
Sacrifices made by Shauna Lenius are also awe-inspiring.
Based in North Vancouver, B.C., Shauna is the president of Freshco.ca — which is referenced on linkedin.com as “an award-winning boutique facilities firm, specializing in multi-size maintenance and project construction.”
“She’s doing really well and she’s living her dream,” a proud son says. “She’s all over North America — Dallas, Toronto, Scottsdale …
“She tells her story when she does her talks in front of prominent people for her business. When I was growing up, there were a couple of times when we would have $20 for the whole week. She had to starve to feed me.
“So when I tell these kids about it, they can relate, because some of them have come to school hungry or they have one parent in their life. My story is relatable in so many facets to a plethora of kids from different walks of life.”
Lenius lived in Regina until he was seven, when he moved with his mother to Vancouver. Even after relocating to B.C., Brayden would often return to Regina to visit family members — such as his beloved grandparents, Jim and Lynn Lenius.
“I lived the poorest of the poor and then, when we got to Vancouver, Mom started to make some money and we started to live comfortably,” Brayden Lenius says.
“I’ve lived in every stage of life — from the bottom low per cent to the top one per cent. I’ve seen all spectrums so I can speak on all spectrums. I think that makes my word a little bit more relatable and a little bit more powerful.”
It was a powerful moment, then, when Lenius scored his first CFL touchdown. The landmark major came just 12:30 into his first pro football game — the Roughriders’ 33-29 victory over the B.C. Lions on Aug. 6, 2021.
After catching a 12-yard scoring pass from Cody Fajardo, Lenius was so caught up in the excitement that he threw the ball into the south stands at Mosaic Stadium.
Then he remembered his promise to give the first touchdown ball to his mother.
Thankfully, a Roughriders fan returned the football to Lenius, who soon handed it off to his mom.
I wanna say a huge thank you to Rider Nation & everyone who helped get my 1st TD ball back! Also a special thank you to my man Nixon & his family for the trade (i think it was a pretty good one 😏) pic.twitter.com/Df3L5sV9jX
— Brayden Lenius (@BraydenLenius) August 14, 2021
Lenius had played in 11 games as a rookie after being selected by Saskatchewan in the second round (15th overall) of the 2019 CFL draft.
Five days before the draft, his grandfather Jim Lenius had died of a rare form of cancer at age 78.
“He’s one of the strongest men I’ve ever met,” Brayden Lenius says of his grandfather, who was a long-time Roughriders season-ticket holder. “When I was training in Regina leading up to the draft, he would come and watch me. You could tell he was in pain, but he would sit there and smile. You could hear his pump, but he was still sitting there smiling.”
Brayden Lenius was drafted out of the University of New Mexico. He transferred to the Albuquerque-based campus a few months after the 2017 Fiesta Bowl, in which he had played with a heavy heart.
“When I talk to kids, I use all these examples of how you can overcome adversity,” he says. “I tell the kids that when you go through these things, it’s not a knock on yourself.
“You can’t say, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ You have to internalize it and realize, ‘This is what happened. This is how life deals its cards.’
“You can go back to COVID. That’s something that is so uncontrollable. That’s how life deals its own cards and we have to handle it our own way.”
Life’s often-unpredictable path took Lenius to New Mexico after three years at Washington.
“I failed two drug tests at the University of Washington,” he notes. “I use all that stuff as examples for kids, because I’ve made mistakes.
“I’ve been to hell and back, but I can show you the vouchers and I’m here right now — 100 per cent.
“I’ll sit up there when I’m talking about it and smile about it, because that’s something that is part of my story. It’s something I can use as an example and say to kids, ‘Hey, you may see me on the field and everything and I’m happy-go-lucky, but it wasn’t all that until this point.’ ”
Consider the constructive manner in which the 6-foot-5 Lenius handled the pandemic period.
He played at 240 pounds — a traditional tight end’s weight in American football — as a Roughriders rookie, catching just two passes for four yards.
Recognizing the need to be more streamlined as a CFL slotback, he lost 25 pounds between the end of the 2019 season and the COVID-delayed kickoff of the 2021 campaign.
Lenius then enjoyed a breakout season, registering 37 catches for 471 yards in 14 games. He led the team in touchdown catches (four) and receptions of 30-plus yards (four) in 2021.
The Atlanta Falcons took notice, signing Lenius in January of 2022 after he had worked out for a handful of NFL teams.
While in Atlanta, Lenius took a long, appreciative look at the Falcons’ Ring of Honor and saw the name of Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive lineman Claude Humphrey, who been a teammate of Eldridge Dickey at Tennessee State. Humphrey, like Dickey, was a first-round draft pick in 1968.
Lenius was released by the Falcons in late July of 2022. By late August, he was back with the Roughriders, for whom he caught 17 passes for 172 yards and one touchdown in seven games last year.
During the off-season, Lenius has split his time between Regina and Victoria, B.C. He shares a home on Vancouver Island with his fiancée, Haley Belyk.
Like Shauna Lenius, Belyk was a prominent Regina high school basketball player before continuing with the sport at the post-secondary level.
Belyk was a member of the LeBoldus Golden Suns, who she helped win a Regina Intercollegiate Basketball League senior girls title in 2012, before joining the University of Guelph Gryphons.
She was a Guelph student-athlete at the same time as Kian Schaffer-Baker, who joined Lenius in the Roughriders’ receivers’ room in 2021.
Another Saskatchewan pass-catcher, Mitch Picton, will be the best man when Lenius and Belyk are married April 19, 2024 in Victoria.
“We just secured a beautiful townhouse in Victoria,” Lenius says with a smile. “We’ve got two beautiful dogs. My family’s doing well.
“I’m finally getting some goodness after all the adversity I went through.”
