ZACK DUGUAY MEMORIAL

He loved the Minnesota Vikings. Loved them. He may have been 21 and a goliath-like 6-foot-5 and 300 pounds, but his bedroom remained youthfully purple and yellow and crammed with Vikings stuff.

Zack Duguay’s passion for the Vikes wasn’t exclusive though. He loved the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, too. His mom was from here and passed along some genetic fondness for the home team. And her boy was also beginning to bleed maroon, having just registered for McMaster where he was going to play on the Marauders this fall.

“He just loved the game,” says his coach with the Hamilton Hurricanes, Jason Hayes.

Playing took effort, though. Considerably more than what was demanded of every other player. Because, when Duguay turned 10, he started having seizures. Within a couple of years, they were occurring with regularity, even during practices and games.

The contact apparently didn’t make things worse. Doctors said football wasn’t going to exacerbate anything and there was no reason he couldn’t play. So he kept at it.

He started as a quarterback in the mould of his hero, Daunte Culpepper, the rather gigantic former pivot of the Vikings.

“Everyone used to bug him and say, ‘You can’t be quarterback, you’re too big,’ ” says his dad, Brian.

Turned out they were right. Before long he was moved to the offensive line where he starred in high school. Then in the Ontario Football Conference with the Hurricanes where he wore a tinted visor in his helmet to block sudden glints of light that could set off the seizures. Still, they continued.

No, they weren’t fun to watch. Occasionally they startled the other team, especially at the beginning. But, over time, coaches and parents and players and officials came to understand what was happening. Those who didn’t know were warned about the situation before the game and told not to worry. If he had one, the game just stopped for a couple of minutes until it passed, then he’d walk off the field and take some time to recover.

Forced time, as it turned out. His teammates would often have to hide his helmet to keep him from going right back in. Despite the toll each seizure took — and even with a torn ligament in his arm for much of last season — he hated missing any plays.

And he was good. Really good. Duguay was dominant on the offensive line. As a long snapper, Hayes says he was NFL quality. He was going to start chasing that pro dream in a few days when McMaster’s camp opened.

He knew he probably wasn’t going to get much playing time since the entire o-line was returning. But he was quite content to start fighting for a spot on a great team that would open the season as a heavy Vanier Cup favourite.

Last Thursday, he went to the school to register and get his ID.

“He was on Cloud Nine,” dad says. “He was happy.”

Several hours later, in the middle of that night, his parents heard a bang in his room and went to check on him as they had so many times before. He was lying face down on the floor and convulsing.

“After 10 seconds, we knew this was not normal,” dad says.

They called 911. Minutes later, he was gone.

Nearly 2,500 people showed up over two days of visitation at the funeral home. Many of them from the football community. Among them, a number of folks from McMaster.

“When I got the email, it was shocking,” says Mac assistant coach Jon Behie, who was preparing for camp to open in just over a week. “This kid was just starting a phase of his life he was so excited about.”

Hey, it was football. He was always excited about that.