Plainsmen, football community mourning Boyd

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This article was published 01/03/2016 (3687 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s one less gigantic smile in Brandon today and the city’s football community is feeling the effect of it.

Kevin Boyd, who has been involved in the Westman Youth Football Association and was the head coach of the Crocus Plainsmen high school football team, passed away on Monday after complications with stomach and liver issues. He was 46 years old.

“It’s devastating,” said Mike Steeves, the head coach of the Vincent Massey Vikings and a friend of Boyd. “Football is still fairly new to the city and the area. He’s been coaching at Crocus for a long time, close to 20 years, and a great coach with great character.

“He’s a guy who makes football fun. He put so much time and energy into the Crocus program. He gave so much back to the sport that gave so much to him.”

Boyd was born in Rivers and didn’t start playing football until Grade 10 when he attended Crocus Plains. It didn’t take long for the offensive lineman to fall in love with the sport. He helped the Plainsmen win the Winnipeg High School Football League championship in 1987 — the only time a Brandon school has topped the league — and went off to play for Minot State University.

He was selected by the Edmonton Eskimos in the 1993 Canadian Football League supplemental draft but did not make the team due to high blood pressure. He also tried out for Toronto, B.C., Hamilton and Ottawa before returning to Minot State to finish his studies, where he met his wife Jordana.

Boyd started giving back to the game shortly after his playing career ended. He spent one year in North Dakota as an assistant coach at Garrison High School before returning to Brandon, where he immediately volunteered to help with the Plainsmen. He eventually moved up the ranks to take over as head coach.

Boyd, who always seemed to have a smile on his face, had a way of pushing his players to new heights and had a huge impact on their lives.

“He was a really friendly guy, but when he needed to be serious he was serious,” said Brayden Moroz, who played under Boyd at Crocus and is now an offensive lineman with the Regina Thunder of the Prairie Football Conference.

“I think it was just respectfulness and character. He was a really big character guy. He taught a lot of us life lessons as we went through.”

Moroz said he wouldn’t have played on the under-18 provincial team and joined the junior ranks if it hadn’t been for Boyd pushing him and instilling the confidence that he could play at that level.

One of Boyd’s proudest achievements was coaching his eldest son Logan, 17, for the past two years at Crocus. Logan is currently in Grade 12. Boyd has two other sons: Eric, 13, and Landon, 9.

Boyd put a lot of hard work into coaching and was a true sportsman. He would always compliment players on good plays regardless of which team they were on. He was willing to share his playbooks with Steeves if it meant it would help kids play the game, even though Steeves coached a cross-town rival.

His job as executive director at Career Connections, a supportive employment agency that helps people with disabilities find employment in the community, may show just how much he cared about other people in general. It may also explain the smile on his face and laugh, which is something Steeves will remember most.

“His smile and his big chuckle,” Steeves said. “You could get him laughing. When you see a big guy laugh, I’m not sure if there’s anything better than that. He was a guy who was eager to laugh and eager to help out and eager to smile. His sense of humour was a wonderful thing and anyone who knew him knew of his big smile and his big heart and that will be a loss that we all have. We’ll remember this big giant man with a giant smile.”

Moroz and Steeves agree the community will miss that smile and personality, and it may never be replaced.

“I don’t think people realize how big of an influence he really had on everybody,” Moroz said. “No matter what school you go to, you can ask people from Neelin and Massey the influence he had and everybody knew and loved him. I don’t think there will be somebody like him for a while.”

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