FOAM LAKE — Craig Reynolds returned to school for a post-graduate form of show and tell.
He carried the Grey Cup into assemblies at Foam Lake Elementary School (kindergarten to Grade 6) and Foam Lake Composite School (Grades 7-12) on Friday.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ President-CEO was accompanied by Tommy Stevens, who ran for two of the community-owned CFL team’s three touchdowns in a 25-17 championship-game victory over the Montreal Alouettes on Nov. 16.
Soon after Saskatchewan captured the Cup for the fifth time in franchise history, Reynolds began envisioning a grand excursion to his hometown.
“He reached out to us,” marvelled Nevin Halyk, the high school’s Principal, during an afternoon visit. “He said, ‘We’ll be there the whole day, so there’s no rush. What do you want to do?’
“It was all about us and not about him. That says a lot about him and a lot about the Riders, too. They’re so grateful for the support they get.”
The gratitude went both ways.
“This is really good for the school and the community,” said Carson Osborne, a Grade 9 student. “It has been really cool to see it all. We’re very fortunate as a town and a province that they won it all.
“This means a lot. We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. It had been 12 years.”
Osborne doesn’t remember the earlier Grey Cup victory, but he celebrated it all the same.
“I had a picture taken with the Cup in 2013,” he said with a smile. “My dad took it.”
When Osborne posed for a photo on Friday, he was flanked by two fellow signal-callers — Stevens and Reynolds. The latter is a former quarterback of the Foam Lake Panthers high school team.
“My claim to fame is that we lost every game when I was the quarterback,” Reynolds told the students. “That tells you how good I was.”
So does a plaque, prominently displayed in the high school’s lobby, celebrating Reynolds’ 2022 induction into the Horizon School Division Wall of Fame.
In a second-floor classroom — where many an incalculable number of math classes were taught by Graham Farrell — a drawing of Reynolds commemorates his decoration as Foam Lake Composite’s top math student of 1993. He thus appears in the school’s Math Wall of Fame.
“He’s a celebrity,” Halyk said, “but he’s kind of just our guy.”
Halyk has known Reynolds for as long as the Roughriders’ President-CEO can remember. Once upon a time, Halyk babysat Reynolds and his sister, Lisa.
“We’d usually watch a little TV and then they’d go to bed,” said Halyk, whose parents resided just two blocks away from Dale and Anne Reynolds and their two children in the town of 1,100.
Anne enjoyed a lengthy tenure as the secretary at Foam Lake Elementary School, where her son began to achieve stratospheric academic standards.
“Craig was in my first-ever calculus class,” noted Farrell, who joined the high school’s faculty in 1990 and, despite being “semi-retired,” still teaches morning classes.
“He was so smart, it was ridiculous. Everything he ever did, he rose to the top.”
Everything?
“I actually scored on that basketball net, right down there,” Reynolds said in the gymnasium, pointing to his left. “Right after halftime, we inbounded the ball, I got a breakaway, and scored on our own net.”
There were plenty of eyewitnesses.
“I think I was the referee,” Farrell mused.
“Every small town is like that. Everyone plays so many roles.”
Farrell, for example, is the mayor.
His wife, Cheryl, is Foam Lake Elementary School’s principal. And — expanding the web even further — Cheryl was Reynolds’ English teacher in Grade 12.
“It’s a typical Saskatchewan small town,” he said. “Everybody knows everybody.
“I couldn’t sleep last night, because I was so excited. It’s something you dream about — taking the Grey Cup back to your hometown.”
It was the second such visit for Reynolds, who was the Roughriders’ Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer when they won the Grey Cup in 2013.
Not long after that, Reynolds embarked for Foam Lake with receivers Weston Dressler and Taj Smith.
Dressler accompanied Reynolds on a subsequent trip to Foam Lake Composite School, where — unbeknownst to the proud alumnus — his image was part of the Math Wall of Fame.
“No one had told me that they did such a thing,” Reynolds remembered. “It was years after I went to school there.
“The Club had provided some funding to support the amateur football program in Foam Lake, so Weston and I came back to present that cheque. They were giving Weston a school tour.
“I had never seen the (Math Wall of Fame) before. I walked in there and it was kind of jarring. You look up and your huge face is on the wall.
“It’s interesting, too, because I know the people who are up there with me who are around my age or of my vintage. It’s such a small town and such a small school, so there’s familiar faces beside me.”
And in front of him.
“At the elementary school this morning, I got asked a question by a kid,” Reynolds said. “He looked so much like a friend of mine. I knew instantly it was a friend of mine’s son.
“I asked him who his parents were and, of course, it was Brennan Hack’s young son. I thought, ‘That’s Brennan’s kid,’ because he looks exactly like him.
“The familiarity really hit me all day.”
It was the same thing when Reynolds and Stevens visited Foam Lake Community Hall, which was built entirely by volunteers.
Everyone who entered the expensive facility was already on a first-name basis with Reynolds. They were quickly on a first-name basis with the amiable Stevens, who introduced himself to everyone upon their arrival.
“Experiencing this with Craig and his son, Noel, makes this very special,” the Roughriders’ short-yardage specialist said.
Reynolds and Stevens posed for photos and signed autographs at all three venues they visited on Friday. Appreciation was evident at every stop.
“Thank you for building on the history of our school,” Principal Halyk said as the Roughriders’ delegation prepared to transport the Grey Cup, secure in its case, to the Community Hall.
“This is a page in the yearbook.”