A new football tradition: Colts, Vikings to honour fallen coach in Thursday’s Rick Boksteyn Bowl

By JAMES TUBB on September 1, 2021.

NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB Crescent Heights Vikings football head coach Sean Davis leads a drill with his team Tuesday afternoon. The Vikings are facing off against the Monsignor McCoy Colts Thursday night in the first annual Rick Boksteyn bowl. The bowl game is in honour of Rick Boksteyn, the former Colts coach who passed away last year.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

Crescent Heights and Monsignor McCoy’s football game Thursday night will be an emotional one.

The teams will face off in the first ever Rick Boksteyn Bowl, a one-game bowl in honour of the McCoy Colts’ former coach, Rick Boksteyn, who passed away last year.

“When he passed away, it was a big hit to us,” said Colts head coach Darrell Grass. “This game is more or less to honour Rick and what he’s done for Medicine Hat football.”

Boksteyn coached the Colts’ for 36 years and was a recently-retired member of the Medicine Hat Fire Department for 35 years. He was said to have a special gift in pushing players to when they needed it in order get the best results out of them.

“He had the ability to get the best out of players, not always in the nicest way,” Grass said. “He would let the kids know exactly what needed to be done and the kids loved it.”

The Colts and Grass would obviously love to bring home the hardware – an old firefighting trophy – in honour of their former coach, but are more focused on the game and honouring Boksteyn.

For Xavier Bueckert, a Grade 12 player on the Colts, the game will be a difficult one.

“It’s going to be tough with him not being there,” he said. “It’s not the same energy without him there.”

Bueckert said Boksteyn played a big role in his football career and helped excel his and his teammates’ abilities beyond their imaginations. He plans to honour his former coach by playing with Boksteyn in his thoughts.

“I mostly want to play the game how he’d want us to and keep him in our thoughts every single play, and play this game for him and nobody else,” Bueckert said.

The bowl game Thursday night will be the first matchup between the Vikings and Colts this season as the city rivals continue to get the campaign underway. For Vikings head coach Sean Davis, who coached against Boksteyn for multiple seasons, the memorial game was a no-doubter.

“The bowl was something Coach Grass really wanted to do in memory of Coach Boksteyn and we’re really on board with it, 100%,” Davis said.

“This bowl game gives us a little more incentive to remember coach Boksteyn and all of his contributions to tackle football in Medicine Hat,” he said.

For Grade 12 Viking player Lucas Semrau, the bowl game allows a city rich of football to honour Boksteyn’s legacy.

“We just want to cherish the legacy that he’s made for football in this city. We have great competitive football teams here and I think he would want us to keep it going,” Semrau said.

The Rick Boksteyn Bowl game gets underway Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Methanex Bowl.

“Coach Boksteyn was close with so many of us and we’re just a big family here. Although we wear different colours on game day, outside of that we’re all here for the same thing, what’s best for the kids. Coach Boksteyn really embodied that,” Davis said.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of the story stated Thursday’s game would be played at the field behind McCoy High School. It is being played at the Methanex Bowl. An earlier version of the story also misspelled Xavier Bueckert’s last name, as Bueckery.