Dave Heasman, a Calgarian who lived out his dream by playing for his hometown team, is the president of the Stampeders alumni association.

Heasman, who played four seasons (2000-03) with the Stamps, took over from Srecko Zizakovic in 2016.

“Really, we are an extension of the Calgary Stampeder Football Club,” said Heasman. “The alumni are the guys who put it all on the line for the club back in the day and a lot of them stayed in Calgary (after their playing careers) and we’re active members of the community. We’re an active association and we’re doing some good things.”

The three main initiatives with which the alumni association is involved are the Calgary Children’s Foundation, the Shouldice football field project and the Calgary Stampeder Alumni Foundation, which helps numerous causes.

Heasman had served on the alumni board for eight years before being appointed president during the association’s annual general meeting.

During his playing days, he served on the Stamps’ offensive line alongside the likes of Jay McNeil, Jamie Crysdale, Fred Childress, Rocco Romano and Thomas Rayam.

As a youngster growing up as Stamps fan in the 1980s, he was mostly unaware of some of the hard times the franchise was going through.

“It’s pretty funny,” he said. “As a kid growing up in Calgary, you go through the old ‘Save Our Stamps’ days and you don’t really know as a kid what all that means except for going to games with my dad and it felt like there were about 30 of us in the stands.”

By the time he experienced Stamps football as a professional — albeit as a member of the rival Edmonton Eskimos — things had changed dramatically, and for the better.

“I just remember looking around,” he recalled. “You’ve got a packed McMahon Stadium, you’ve just participated in your first Labour Day game and you’re thinking, ‘Yeah, this is really special.’ Being from Calgary and seeing so many Labour Day matches, it was always such a big deal and now here you are living it.”

At the time, Heasman wondered if he would ever get to experience the classic rivalry as a member of the Red and White.

“Those first two years in Edmonton go by pretty quick and you realize that if you’re going to stay in the CFL, I’d like to get home,” he said. “I hadn’t played in front of anyone in my family for a long time because I went away to Notre Dame (in Wilcox, Sask.) for high school. So 15 years old and I’m already away from my home and family and all the friends who would watch you play if you were playing at the local high school. And then from there I go down to Arizona and for five years I’m at Northern Arizona, playing in the Big Sky Conference.

“After all these years of travel, how do we get back home?”

The solution proved quite simple — Heasman became a free agent Feb. 15, 2000, and wound up signing with his hometown team.

He was joining a Stamps club that had posted 11 straight winning seasons and had knocked off Heasman’s Eskimos in the each of the two previous playoff years. Just to sweeten the pot a touch more, the 2000 Grey Cup was being held in Calgary.

Dream scenario, right? Well, it was until injuries — including a couple that knocked Heasman and starting quarterback Dave Dickenson out of the game — hit the first-place Stamps in the West final and Calgary fell to BC.

“All of a sudden,” he said, “our dream of Grey Cup at home was over.”

Dickenson left to try his luck in the NFL the following season and the Stamps started the 2001 campaign with three consecutive losses.

“At one point (later in the season) when we only had three or four wins,” recalled Heasman, “people were thinking, ‘Oh, this thing is over.’ The dynasty of what the Stamps had been was coming to a quick end.”

The team was also dealing with a change of ownership during the season, only adding to the uncertainty and turmoil.

But then, the old pros from the great ’90s squads still remaining with the Stamps got their second wind.

“We got hot at the right time,” said Heasman of the push that culminated with a win over the heavily favoured Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Grey Cup. “That’s what payoff football is all about — winning at the right time. They’ll never be able to take that away from the guys on that team.”

It was the last gasp for that era, however. The Stamps won a combined 11 games over the next two seasons and missed the playoffs both years. Heasman became a free agent following the 2003 campaign and when negotiations with the Stamps, who by then were being run by Michael Feterik, Fred Fateri and Matt Dunigan, failed to produce an agreement, Heasman went West to be reunited with former Stamps boss Wally Buono, who was now running the BC Lions.

He played one season with the Lions — and made a second Grey Cup appearance — before deciding to walk away from the game.

“I thought I had a couple of years left in me,” he said, “and I sometimes question whether I made the right decision, but I left on my terms and I guess that’s the bigger thing.

“You learn so much in team sport. I had been working with Enmax right after I started with the Stampeders. I had a degree in business and I had been working with Enmax (while still playing) so it was an easier transition for me to just go back to work.

“I wanted to transition to the oil industry and became a surface landman. I worked with a couple of services companies in my time and now I’m a senior surface landman with Husky Energy.

“Everything, I think, has worked out great.”