Back in Grade 8, Alicia Gladue worked as a photographer/social media coordinator for the Fort McKay Northern Spirits.
During a game near the end of the season, with a short bench, coach Dylan Elias begged the teenager to put the phone down and go into the game as a player.
“My coach was like, ‘Can you go in?’ and I was like, ‘Heck no,’” Gladue recalled this week over the phone from BC Lions training camp, where she is working with the team’s coaching staff. “He said, ‘We need you to go in, please, please.’ One player stormed off to the locker room. I was like, ‘You go back on and I’ll go with you.’
At the time, Elias simply wanted to avoid forfeiting the game. He had no idea if Gladue even knew where to stand on the field.
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Alicia Gladue is the Lions’ Women in Football Program participant at this year’s training camp (BCLions.com)
But the moments that change lives tend to happen when we least expect them. And in that moment, Gladue — who grew up on the Fort McKay First Nation along the banks of the Athabasca River about 500 kilometres north of Edmonton — figures she found her place in this world.
“I realized she didn’t have any fear,” Elias said. “She was a little girl, but she showed up big. She went toe-to-toe with some of these big Grade 10 boys playing running back.
“She’s relentless. She is fearless, and she always tries to get better.”
Seven years later, that drive to get better led Gladue to apply for the CFL’s Women in Football Program presented by KPMG.
Gladue was selected as the BC Lions’ participant in this year’s program, which places women with CFL clubs during training camp to gain experience in football operations and coaching.
Now 20, Gladue is spending training camp with the Lions in Kamloops, working with linebackers coach Mark Washington and defensive coordinator Mike Benevides. The days are long, with early wake-ups, meetings, practices, game-planning and film review before finally getting back to her room each night around 9:30 p.m.
“Everyone was super welcoming,” Gladue said of her first day on the job. “I had a little bit of imposter syndrome, but after a while I was like, ‘Oh, this is so possible.’
“At the beginning I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is so crazy,’ but the coaches are normal people, just like me.”
They’re normal people who share Gladue’s love for the game.
“Football changed my life,” she said. “I was smoking and drinking at a young age. It’s super easy to become a product of your environment, and football gave me a purpose and something to work towards, which took me away from the smoking and drinking.”
Gladue still plays football as a middle linebacker for the Arctic Pride, an Edmonton-based team in the Western Women’s Canadian Football League. She’s also come full circle with the Fort McKay program, where she serves as the special teams coordinator and linebackers coach for the Northern Spirits.
Gladue will be with the BC Lions throughout training camp (BCLions.com)
“She’s had a lot of coaching opportunities — she coached the provincial Indigenous boys’ high school team,” said Elias, who met Gladue when he worked at the youth centre on the Fort McKay First Nation. “The only thing I can do is offer moments and opportunities. A lot of the kids I’ve seen throughout the years have had the same access to opportunities as Alicia, but not everyone is able to actually take those opportunities and make them into something.
“She really took everything that was available to her and turned it into something special. She’s kind of been a trailblazer, I guess that’s the word, for a lot of kids who came after her.”
To that end, Gladue serves as a billet mom for the Northern Spirits.
“I take care of four girls, taking them to school, making food, being a ride whenever they need for appointments and stuff like that,” she said. “I want to give back. That’s what drives me to hopefully change somebody’s life, even if it’s for one year. Planting these little seeds, that’s what’s most important.”
Elias sees big things ahead for Gladue — including the possibility of playing professionally overseas and building on her experience with the Lions to climb the coaching ranks in Canada.
But in the long run, Gladue knows where her heart lies.
“If it’s coaching, if it’s public speaking, if it’s mentoring — any of those, I think they would be great,” she said. “It’s going to be something around helping Indigenous youth, because that’s what gives me drive.
“That’s what makes me happy.”
