The 2023 season was one to remember for the University of Alberta Golden Bears football program.
Flashback to Nov. 11 of that year, the team found themselves in their first Hardy Cup since 2010 and one win away from capturing the trophy for the first time in 42 years.
It was a moment that could rewrite years of underwhelming postseason results and catapult the Golden Bears back onto the map of U SPORTS football.
The Golden Bears had all the tools at their disposal to do it. A trio of Eli Hetlinger at quarterback, Matthew Peterson at running back and Carter Kettyle at wide receiver led the school to a 6-2 record and tied for first in the conference — their best regular season finish since 2005.
However, it was the UBC Thunderbirds who would walk out of Thunderbird Stadium with the trophy that night.
Fast forward to the present day, and it's the man who was the Thunderbirds' offensive coordinator that night, Stevenson Bone, who is now at the helm of the Golden Bears program.
Except, it's not the same team that he faced up against that evening in November of 2023. Things have changed for the University of Alberta since then.
The team has lost some players from the run, including, most notably, the 2023 Canada West player of the year running back Matthew Peterson.
The Golden Bears would also miss the playoffs in 2024 with a 2-6 record after their storybook 2023 campaign. However, 2025 represents an opportunity to reset and change course.
Although they've lost some parts from the 2023 team, key veterans such as Hetlinger, Kettyle and linebacker Chase Tataryn are returning to the team this season. It's a reason why some believe this team could be one hot streak away from finding its way back into the playoffs. One of those people is new head coach, Stevenson Bone.
"I think that 2024 was actually a bit of an anomaly for this group," Bone said in an interview with OB.SESSED. "There are still pieces from that team and talent from that team, especially on offence ... the championship came down to literally the last play in 2023. So to me, I sit there and I go, 'they're not far off.'"
Bone has had an interesting path to becoming the head of the University of Alberta's football program. Coming from a five-year U SPORTS career as a player, where he won the 2017 Vanier Cup with the Western Mustangs, to serving as an assistant coach under some of the biggest-name coaches in U SPORTS football, the former signal caller has a long history with the sport of football.
"I think it was always in my nature to be a coach," said Bone, who's father Jamie became the first ever Canadian university quarterback to play in the NFL in 1980.
"I was always kind of around the game, even from a young age," he explained. "I've been very lucky, you know, Jean-Paul Circelli at Windsor, Chris Bertoia at Waterloo, Steve Snyder at Queens, I knew Michael Faulds at Laurier through the grapevine ... I've worked for or coached with about nine former or current U SPORTS head coaches. And that just leads to the experience of knowing how everything kind of works."
Since joining the university coaching ranks in 2019, Bone knew that one day he wanted to make the jump to becoming the head of a program. And now that the moment has finally come, it is "a bit surreal" and a full-circle moment for the former Western quarterback.
"My aunt lived in Stony Plain, so I'd come out to Edmonton a little bit as a kid," Bone said. "2018 Grey Cup, I came here and I was working for the CFL at the time, came to Foote Field and saw everything."
Stevenson's sister Jamie also competed for the Mustangs, on the track and field team. She medalled in pole vault at the U of A hosted national championships in 2013. Photo: Western Mustangs
Even though he has been calling plays on the sideline across from the Golden Bears' sideline for years, he always respected the team's heart and ambition whenever they faced UBC.
"I also always appreciated Alberta, because they were a very physical team and we always played really tough matchups against them," Bone shared. "I remember our guys being always sore at the end of the games at UBC [against Alberta] ... I thought, wow, like that's actually a place that I really would like to go to."
The situation Bone is walking into at the University of Alberta is quite different from the one at UBC. Blake Nill spent several years building the Thunderbirds program before it reached its current state. But Bone is committed to doing the same with the Golden Bears — even if it means taking some time to figure it out.
"I'm pretty confident in the sense that I do know kind of what I want and what I want it to look like. The process is the part that I don't really know exactly how to navigate, yet. That's what I am sort of discovering. But, I do know what it's supposed to look like," said Bone.
"If you look at the way that Greg Marshall built his programs when I was there, in 2012, we were five and three. By 2017, the scoring differential in the playoffs was 200+ points... that's beating teams by an average of 50 points every single game in the playoffs."
"I saw the end of the process, what it was supposed to look like. In my head, I'm trying to recreate that experience for our players."
But the core philosophy of how Bone is trying to construct his culture at the University of Alberta revolves around drawing on experiences and insights from everything he has learned on his road to becoming the head coach in Edmonton, not just from his playing career.
"You definitely take pieces from everybody. I mean, I sit there and I look at coach Marshall. He definitely would get on you. But at the same time, you knew where it was coming from: from a place of love," he said.
"Blake [Nill] was a great fundraiser. Ryan Sheahan is great at X's and O's ... So you pick a little bit of things from them. How can I be a good fundraiser like Nill? How could I develop my offence so that it makes sense and is layered like Ryan's?"
"And I'm not trying to say that I am trying to become them either. I think that I've actually taken the best pieces of them and then put a little bit of my spin on it."
Ahead of his first game as a head coach against Saskatchewan in Week 1, Bone is prepared to begin the next journey in his coaching chapter. The new head coach expects there to be obstacles, but remains optimistic about how he and the program will face them in the upcoming year.
"I haven't won any games, I haven't lost any games yet ... there will be their challenges ... I think that the biggest difference that I'm getting used to is that, you do have final say on things," shared Bone.
"I don't think I'll ever be a finished product ... the late Dan Dorazio, he always would take copious notes, and it was his 50th year of coaching. So to me, that's kind of what I want to emulate."
The program has struggled to make it over the hump in the past, and with a subpar 2024 season, it's anyone's guess how this year will go. Alberta may not be on anyone's bingo card to win the Hardy Cup this season, but Bone feels this team should embrace the underdog mentality in 2025 and can use it to their advantage.
"We want to talk our goals into fruition... I look back on the 2017 team, even the 2015 and 2016 team at Western, we talked about our goals," Bone said. "I'm okay also with the fact that you know no one's going to pick us to do anything this year. That's okay. That doesn't bother me in the least because no one picked Regina last year, and they won."
Bone threw for 2,460 yards and 15 touchdowns over 36 career appearances at Western, including 14 playoff games, and rushed for 672 yards and nine more scores on the ground. Photo: Brandon VandeCaveye/Mustangs
"We definitely are the underdog in most of these matchups. But that's okay. I look at it like if we can just sustain a little bit more success... it could get pushed over the hump and it could be our year."
Although the goals may seem lofty to an outsider, Bone is hungry to start winning right out of the gate.
"I will tell you right now, I feel good. I feel prepared. I feel like we have a good team ... I want to think big," he said.
"I want to do it right now. I want to win it right now... I sit there and think if they've gone through all this, I owe it to them. I'm trying to give them my very best and trying to win this season. I very easily could have been like the other team south of here and just got rid of all the vets and tried to retool. But, I'm trying to win this season with this group."
"It may be a spectacular failure, we'll see, obviously. But at the same time, I think at the end of the year, they'll just know that we did try to win with this group, this group of guys that still care deeply about this program, the city, everything that the university stands for... and I really do think that I owe it to this group to try to make a crack at it."
It's officially a new era of Golden Bears football, and head coach Stevenson Bone is up to the challenge of bringing the team back to the top of the mountain.
While things may have gone wrong in the past for this team, they are showing no signs of letting 2025 go to waste.
In the words of Bone, "it may be a spectacular failure."
But this season might just end up with the Golden Bears finishing what they started in November of 2023 and finally bringing home a Hardy Cup.