Forever Linked

Article by Brian Swane - Special to CW 

The sun has set on a beautiful fall day in the Phoenix suburbs, leaving two Golden Bear greats to reminisce about their good times on the gridiron at the University of Alberta.

When they think about teammates, Blake Dermott and Stew McAndrews quote the most famous words of legendary hockey coach Fred Shero:

"Win today and we walk together forever."

It's been over four decades since the Golden Bears defeated the UBC Thunderbirds 11-8 in the 1981 Hardy Cup to win Alberta's most recent championship, and they're still walking together. Nowadays it's on the golf course, whether in Scottsdale, Ariz., where Dermott and McAndrews are currently enjoying some vacation time, or the Okanagan, where a group of players from 1981 Golden Bears got together during the summer.

They are forever linked as champions: under the guidance of storied coach Jim Donlevy, the Golden Bears won the Hardy Trophy three straight years from 1979 to 1981 while also capturing the Vanier Cup in 1980.  

"We had a good team. A lot of really good football players, but a lot of characters, too," says McAndews, who played linebacker on Alberta's 1980 and '81 trophy-winning squads. "You always need that in a team: different personalities that kind of make the world go round. It was a lot of fun."

Prior to winning the Hardy Cup in 1979, the Bears had gone seven years without reaching the postseason and their recruits likewise hadn't experienced championship triumphs with their prior teams in high school or junior football.

"We were a dynasty in those years, and a lot of times when you've got dynasties, you've got guys that come from dynasties, guys that played on teams prior where you learned how to win and you had this winning feeling, and it's just something that just continues to grow within you," says Dermott, a defensive lineman for the three-peat Bears.

"But when you look back at our team, you had this whole group of misfits, these guys that came together that never really had had a good feeling about winning, and the coaching staff was able to find these guys and find whatever was in us and put them together in a team to be successful.

"It was something special, because there was nobody that had that before we got there," Dermott adds. "We built our success with the Bears and we built our success with our teammates and the coaching staff."

The 45th Hardy Cup, at Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver on Nov. 13, 1981, saw Alberta and UBC locked in a defensive struggle. Late in the third quarter the score was 3-3 when Golden Bears safety Gord Syme scooped up a fumble by T-Birds quarterback Glenn Steele and sprinted 25 yards to the end zone for what proved to be the championship-winning touchdown.

"Playing against UBC, which was a pretty darn good team, was a big challenge, but I don't think anybody went into that game against UBC thinking we were going to lose." Dermott says.

It's been 42 years less two days since University of Alberta football has celebrated a championship, a drought that could end at the 86^th Hardy Cup this afternoon when coach Chris Morris' Golden Bears take on the host T-Birds at Thunderbird Stadium.

There are plenty of parallels between the 1981 and 2023 Hardy Cup games: Same opponents, same location. And just as in 1981, Alberta finished this season second in the standings behind UBC, with a 6-2 record having lost both of its games to the T-Birds.

Dermott and McAndrews, who will be tunning in from their desert accommodations to catch the action live on Canada West TV (kickoff at 1 p.m. PT), hope there's one more similarity: the victorious side.

"It's about pride. You want to see your team do well," McAndews says. "It's a long time coming."

"It's way too long," agrees Dermott. "It's too storied of a program to have this much time and distance between the last time (winning the championship). I wish those guys a lot of luck and hope the players have success and Chris Morris finally gets his big playoff win."