A call Steve Mazurak received about Gord Currie on Thursday prompted Mazurak to remember a call he got from Currie.
In 1970, Mazurak returned to Regina after leaving the University of North Dakota following a stint as a redshirt with the Fighting Sioux football team.
Several of his high school friends were playing for the Regina Rams junior team — a squad that was coached by Currie — and Mazurak pondered joining the squad.
In the summer of ’71, Mazurak got a call from Currie, who invited the receiver to become a Ram.
“I had only played one year (Grade 12 at Sheldon-Williams Collegiate), so I was even flattered that he had watched me and thought of me,” Mazurak, the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ vice-president of sales and partnerships, recalled Thursday — hours after hearing that Currie had died at age 93.
“It was the weight of Gord Currie’s voice, the welcome, the sincere pitch. He was just not a hardline, hard-nosed, hard-closing kind of a guy. I thought, ‘Yep, this is for me.’ ’’
Mazurak joined the Rams in ’71 and helped them win a Canadian junior football title that season — one of six the team won during Currie’s 12-year run at the helm.
But Currie is renowned as much for the impact he had on his players off the field as he is for their on-field exploits.
“Gord cared and he understood,” former Rams player and coach Frank McCrystal said in a text message Thursday. “People mattered and he had a profound sense and instinct for doing the right thing. He was truly one of the great Canadians of his time.”
Mazurak still can recall the first time he walked into the Rams’ clubhouse and saw — and heard — Currie address his team.
“He was talking about football and about all those wonderful things that were with you growing up with a great sport,” Mazurak said. “And he was talking about honour.
“I think I learned the word ‘honour’ from Gordon — and that came in the first few moments with him in the locker room, listening to him talk about ‘the game’ and being respectful of the game and of your teammates. I knew that was the place for me.”
Currie’s legend had started forming long before he coached the Rams.
The product of Semans had taught and coached the football team at Balfour Tech for 14 seasons, guiding the Redmen to nine Regina championships, eight southern Saskatchewan crowns and eight provincial titles.
Currie took the reins of the Rams in 1965 and, over the next 12 seasons, led them to 109 wins in 135 games. Regina won seven Western Canadian junior titles as well as those six Canadian junior championships.
“It was his heart and the way he approached the game, the sport and life in general,” Mazurak said when asked why Currie was successful. “He knew how to get the best out of you.
“He was the epitome of teaching and explaining what a team was all about — and he stressed honour. It was, ‘Honour the time you’ve got to practise, honour your teammates and be there for your teammates. In the end, through hard work and effort, you’ll get the desired outcome.’ ”
Mazurak noted that Currie never yelled or screamed, but there was one thing that helped him keep the players focused.
“You would always want to avoid the ‘Gord Currie Look’ coming off the field,” Mazurak said with a chuckle. “You knew in your heart of hearts that If there was a busted play, if there was a miss, if you had somehow failed in the enterprise, you’d get The Look.
“You wanted to win and you wanted to play well for the man and what his expectations were.”
Currie gave speeches in the locker room that Mazurak said would give the players goosebumps, but he stressed respecting the opposition.
Mazurak remembered trips to Saskatoon, where the Rams’ bus would pass the Hilltops’ practice field. If younger players started deriding the Hilltops as they warmed up, Currie nixed the chatter.
“I’ll never forget the amount of respect that he would give the opponent,” Mazurak said. “He’d say, ‘Look, guys, we’re in for the fight of our lives.’ It wouldn’t matter what the standings were; it was going to be the fight of your life.
“That struck me as, ‘OK, this is a different kind of guy.’ This was a different kind of approach to sometimes what you see at the junior or college level, where it’s, ‘Rah rah. We’re going to kill ‘em. We’re going to eat ‘em alive.’ It was never that. It was always, ‘Be cautious, be confident but be respectful.’ ’’
After stepping down as the Rams’ head coach, Currie returned to the teaching profession. He also was a Saskatchewan MLA for four years starting in 1982.
He was inducted into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame in 1978 and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2005. As well, he was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1979.
Funeral arrangements are pending. Mazurak expects lots of stories to be told about Currie at the service as people pay their respects.
“You have to think about what he meant to everybody’s individual life,” Mazurak said. “You hear that bandied about every now and then, but boy, if there was a man who was true to his word, it was Gord Currie. That’s his legacy.”
