Forge partners with Volkswagen to support speqtrum Hamilton through proceeds from Pride match featuring the Pacific Football Club
The Forge Football Club hosted a Pride soccer match sponsored by Volkswagen with proceeds going to support speqtrum, a 2SLGBTQIA+ program through the Young Women’s Christian Association of Canada’s Hamilton chapter.
Focusing on community building and development, speqtrum provides services, events and skill workshops to assist queer and trans young people in Hamilton. speqtrum also offers programs such as weekly check-ins, peer support with staff to chat and provide services over online platforms.
On June 1, the team announced on Instagram post that their June 10 home game at Tim Hortons Field would be held in celebration of Pride month.
"I think it’s important for us to host [the Pride match] for a number of reasons, but the least of all just visibility and going the extra mile to prove that Tim Hortons Field is an inclusive space,” said Shannon Connolly, manager of community partnerships for Forge FC.
The team also announced multiple promotional and merchandise opportunities through which fans could donate to the program. These include a “#BeTheChange Pride Package’’ which contained a ticket to the game, a commemorative pride Forge FC shirt, a charitable $10 donation to speqtrum and a $10 matching donation made by Volkswagen.
In addition to the package, $5 proceeds from the team’s Pride collection sales will also be donated to speqtrum for the remainder of the merchandise’s supply.
"Our mandate in our community department is always to focus on healthy, active and empowered youth . . . We immediately thought of speqtrum when we were looking for a partner for this match because they work really closely with youth and families,” said Connolly.
The first 3,000 fans who attended the game were given a Pride Forge FC bandana as part of the team’s giveaway. Unique visual elements were present at the match, including custom corner flags as well as a rainbow-coloured armband for Kyle Bekker, the team captain for the Forge.
Per Connolly, approximately 200 tickets were donated to speqtrum on behalf of Forge and Volkswagen and given to 2SLGBTQIA+ youth from across Hamilton to attend the match.
Playing against the Pacific Football Club, the Forge lost 0-1 after a late game goal by forward Djenairo Daniels. Both teams played a tightly contested game all throughout the match. After a scoreless first half, a misplay by Forge players Dom Samuel and Triston Henry allowed Pacific FC forward Daniels to notch a wide-open goal in the 85th minute of play.
Despite a 56.4 per cent possession rate for the Forge, the Pacific’s 16 shots and relentless offense managed to overpower the hometown Hammers and bring the visitors to victory. After the game, the Forge sit in third place in the Canadian Premier League standings with four wins, four draws and two losses.
The Forge continue to make donations to speqtrum with merchandise purchases from their 2023 Pride Collection along with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
C/O Wikimedia
Jesse Lumsden: Not your average Marauder and Olympian
Many Olympic athletes train for years to get their form ready for the big event. The typical athlete would train for the sport they’re competing all their life before they start competing on the big stage. However, not all athletes go through their whole career practicing that one sport. Some are talented in other sports as well and go on to prove that on a global level.
An example of such an athlete is Jesse Lumsden, a McMaster alum who pursued a career in both football and bobsledding.
At Mac, Lumsden was a part of the football varsity team. Through his varsity career with the Marauders, the running back won a Hec Crington Trophy in 2004, which is the award for the most outstanding football player in Canadian U sports. Shortly after this massive success with the team, he was signed by the Seattle Seahawks in 2005.
After one year in Seattle, Lumsden made a return to Canada. This time, he joined the Canadian Football League giants Hamilton Tigercats and played in the CFL until the end of his football career in 2011. A particularly notable award that Lumsden has won in his football career was the CFL East All Star achievement, which he received in 2007.
Lumsden's first experience with bobsleighs was in the spring of 2009, when he was recruited to push-test for bobsleigh. Just a couple months after he was recruited, Lumsden made his debut on the big scene, winning a Europa Cup with his partner Pierre Lueders. Shortly after, in 2010 Lumsden made the Vancouver Olympics, where he and Leuders came fifth in both two- and four-man bobsleigh categories.
When asked about how much McMaster has helped him start his career off, Lumsden credited the university for the motivation and support that the football team has provided him with.
“Being a part of the McMaster varsity football team certainly had a massive effect on my career and I am grateful for it. The team at the time was really good, the coaches were very professional and overall, it was a fantastic feeling to be a part of such a squad,” said Lumsden.
Although Lumsden had nothing but complements for the varsity team, he said that it wasn’t easy breaking into the team due to the big competition among the squad.
“At that time, the Marauders had really good players all round. As a running back, it was challenging being the best in that position because they had amazing players in place such as Kojo Aidoo. Kojo was not only a great player but [also] a great person and so were the coaches that got me into the squad,” said Lumsden.
On the subject of transitioning from football to bobsleighing, Lumsden told the story of how he went from being a running back at the varsity team to being at the Olympics for a completely different sport just a few years later.
“While being a football player at McMaster, we consistently received recruiting letters from the Olympic team with regards to bobsleighing. I always thought that it would be pretty interesting to sign up for something like this, so I gave it a go after some time. I knew that at the time the Vancouver Olympics were coming up, so I tried my best to make it in time. I was really proud of myself when I heard that I made it and I think that my growth was genuinely accelerated a couple of months before the big event,” said Lumsden.
When asked about the recent controversy surrounding Ontario University Athletics being labeled as an amateur league, Lumsden outlined that he was not happy about it.
“It’s a complete joke. You know, we had so many Olympians over the past decade going through the OUA and it doesn't make any sense to have this label. If you told me years ago when I was at the peak of my career that I was amateur, I’d just laugh at you,” said Lumsden.
Although many may expect athletes to stick to their initial sport throughout their career, Lumsden has proven to be an exceptional professional on all fronts and has defied those expectations. Not only has he won a best football player of the year award in U-sports, but he has also participated in the winter Olympics in a completely different sport. It is stories like this one that remind us of the abundance of talent found within the Mac community.
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats announced on Tuesday that they’d be playing their 2013 home games in Alumni Stadium at the University of Guelph.
No matter how much pride we might feel about the McMaster Marauders’ dominant season, we’ll have to mix it with a little shame. Our school could have, and should have, found a way to keep the CFL in Hamilton next year. Instead, the Tabbies will be sharing a field with this season’s Yates Cup runners-up.
McMaster represented the Tiger-Cats’ only hope of staying in Hamilton next season while they wait for the 2014 opening of their new facility, which will replace Ivor Wynne Stadium. The University made the decision in June that it wouldn’t host any games, forcing the franchise to look elsewhere for a temporary place of residence.
This wasn’t about money. The Tiger-Cats were prepared to take on the financial burden.
This wasn’t really about capacity either. Guelph’s stadium can hold 7,500 people and can be expanded to 12,000 to 15,000 seats. Ron Joyce Stadium at McMaster comes close, with 5,500 seats that can be expanded to 12,000 (some estimates suggested Ron Joyce could go as high as 17,000). But really, what does a little extra seating matter when your fans are in a different city?
TiCats management hopes that they can fill seats with a mix of diehard fans and a new crop of supporters from Guelph. After all, why should Guelph fans be any less deserving of a CFL team?
Sorry, Guelph, but you are less deserving. Since the Hamilton Tigers and the Hamilton Wildcats joined forces in 1950, Hamiltonians have offered the team all the support they could ask for.
When the Tiger-Cats approached McMaster about playing home games on campus next season, the University needed to back up talk of community engagement by putting its stadium where its mouth was.
But it turned out that McMaster didn’t mean the whole city when it talked about community. When the University made a sudden decision to end discussions with the team after six months of dialogue and shut down the possibility of holding the 10 or 11 Sunday home games on campus, they were looking out for Westdale. The bubble.
Granted, while they might be Hamilton’s team, the Tiger-Cats aren’t Westdale’s team. Their fans of north-east Hamilton – a part of the city where most of the University’s students rarely tread – are blue collar. Pigskin Pete, the team’s unofficial fan-mascot since 1920, would seem out of place anywhere else. (Pete has been represented by four different men, whose primary duties were to don a jersey, and sometimes a fur coat, and lead the iconic “Oskie-Wee-Wee” chant in the stands.)
But even if the Tiger-Cats aren’t Westdale’s team, McMaster needed to assert that it was Hamilton’s university. It didn’t.
So thank you, U of Guelph, for being Hamilton’s university when McMaster could not.