Two Edmonton sports teams made good this past weekend for a young fan who lost his prized hat. Mark Oloruntegbe was attending Saturday’s Canadian Football League game between the Edmonton Elks and the Saskatchewan Roughriders when lightning delayed the start of the second half. The nine-year-old had watched basketball’s Edmonton Stingers the night before at the nearby Expo Centre, where he bought a Stingers hat with money he had earned through his job delivering newspapers and had it autographed by three players afterwards. He was wearing the hat at the Elks game and had placed it in a clear plastic bag to protect it from rain, leaving it at his and his father Seun’s seats at Commonwealth Stadium. When they returned, the hat was gone. “It doesn’t feel good,” Mark told CTV News Edmonton of the hat’s disappearance. “It’s basically like throwing a bunch of money into a sewer.” Nearby fans noticed the crestfallen Mark, one of them who subsequently bought him an Elks hat at a souvenir stand. Another posted on social media about the loss, which was noticed by Elks staff, who brought Mark an Elks shirt and a football during the second half in condolence. Karen Kondoski, the team’s director of fan engagement and the staffer who noticed the Instagram post, said she “totally understood” as a mother herself what it’s like to have an upset child and went into action. “I grabbed a quick screenshot and sent it to my team, saying, ‘When we get back to the game, somebody go up and see this boy bring him a T-shirt and ball, and let’s see what we can do to make his game day a little bit happier.” After the Elks game, Seun took to social media himself, posting about the experience on the Reddit platform, which caught the attention of the Stingers, who reached out and gave the pair tickets to their final home game of the season on Sunday as well as a new hat, which Mark had signed by all 12 Edmonton players after the game as part of the team’s fan appreciation promotion. “The story kind of took on a life of its own, which was not my intention,” Seun recounted to CTV News Edmonton. “Both of those teams did really well to make the situation right. They didn’t have to do anything, but they went out of their way to make sure it was a good memory and not a bad one for him.” Jordan Baker, the head coach, general manager and president of the Stingers, said the Canadian Elite Basketball League squad “Wants to do right” by their fans, knowing “people are spending their hard-earned cash to come and support our team and our players.” “It’s great to see the number of people you see out in the community wearing a Stingers’ hat or a sweater or a hoodie, even during the off-season,” he said. “It just shows how much we’ve grown in the eight years since we’ve been around, and we’re trying to keep that trajectory going.” While football is new to Mark – “It was my first Elks game. I don’t really know how to feel about it. I don’t really understand football yet,” he said – he’s a basketball fan who cheers for the Stingers and for the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, although his favourite player is LeBron James, who recently left L.A. for the Philadelphia 76ers. What he knows now is fans and teams of several stripes can be kind and thoughtful. “It felt like people are, like, caring for me,” he said. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Noah Rishaug
