Matt Jickling thought about reaching for some dark hair dye to make his stiff upper lip more of a Movember standout for the team photo but decided otherwise.
He didn’t want to offend his mother, who is proud of the attributes of her blonde-haired son.
His choice to keep that ‘stache natural had no negative effects on the fundraising abilities of his UNBC Timberwolves men’s basketball team. They had more than enough cash collected to win the three-team challenge that collectively raised $23,384 to fund men’s health initiatives.
The T-wolves hoopsters took up the challenge laid down by the UNBC men’s soccer team, which raised close to a five-figure contribution in 2019, and won the contest over this year’s male soccer squad and the Prince George Spruce Kings junior hockey team. The 15-member basketball team, which included T-wolves alumni Collin Plumb, brought in a haul of $11,259 – the third-highest total U Sports team total.
Assistant coach Nav Parmar raised $2,000 himself and won a bet with graduated T-wolf Marcus McKay, who now has to get a tattoo. All three teams did their part during the month-long campaign. The men’s soccer team booted the team total $6,950, while the Spruce Kings filled the net with $5,625.
The 18-year-old Jickling, who joined the T-wolves this fall as a shooting guard recruit from Regina, couldn’t hold a candle to some of the more accomplished facial hair cultivators of the team, such as Rotash Mattu, Tyrell Laing and Vova Pluzhnikov, but was no less enthusiastic in tapping into his list of contacts to send their donations.
“Rotash probably had the best one, in my opinion,” said Jickling. “Mine’s alright, but I’m still pretty young and pretty blonde.”
Jickling, a first-year student in nature-based tourism management, is in Prince George working out with his teammates but like most UNBC students his studies are online. That added to the difficulty of collecting money for the cause and made it more of a challenge to create awareness for male afflictions such as testicular cancer that men are often reluctant to discuss.
“Most guys just sent out texts to the family, which is what I did,” said Jickling. “When you’re at a game you can reach out to people there but we don’t have that, so you do what you can for donations. It would make it a lot easier if you could have face-to-face conversations with people and you could reach out to more than just family and friends.”
“Men’s mental health and men’s health in general doesn’t have a lot of light shone on it and it’s an important issue. It’s good to see the amount we all raised together.”
The Spruce Kings saluted the winners this week by wearing their basketball jerseys on the ice at practice at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena. The T-wolves soccer team has yet to live up to its obligation to produce a video tribute for social media. Jickling said he wouldn’t mind seeing the footballers try to dunk the ball at the Northern Sport Centre gym. He’ll even try to arrange for a springboard to help the guys on the shorter end of the height spectrum reach the rim.
