It was a moment Miselle Gauthier’s dad had been waiting years for — the Lions had made it to an NFL playoff game, on home turf at Ford Field in Detroit.
Miselle and Ronald Gauthier had season tickets for more than 20 years years, a bonding experience whenever they watched the Lions play.
So when the team took to Ford Field on Sunday, and the Lions got the historic win over the Los Angeles Rams, her dad’s ashes were there with her.
“It was a very emotional game for me,” she said. “I’m just grateful to be able to be there with him. I feel that he’s always with me, so to be there with that moment, it meant a lot to me.”
Gauthier said she and her father got season tickets 28 years ago and rarely missed games. It was a chance for them to spend time together. Football was “their game,” she says.
“He was a Montreal Habs fan, but he just started following football and following Detroit because we’re so close to the border,” she said.
After her dad died seven years ago, Gauthier took over the tickets with her husband.
On Sunday, the Lions, who finished first in the NFC North, won a playoff game for the first time in 32 years, edging the Rams 24-23 in the wild-card round. The win also ended a nine-game post-season losing streak — the longest in NFL history.
Gauthier said being at the Lions’ first playoff game in three decades would have meant the world to him. She said bringing his ashes with her just seemed natural. She even discreetly spread a small amount in the stadium.
Her husband, David, also brought a little bit of his late father’s ashes to the game. His dad was a huge Lions fan who died last year.
Gauthier said her father stuck by the team through thick and thin.
Detroit’s Ford Field is not exactly new anymore opening 22 years ago. But it has never hosted a Lions playoff game. That will change this weekend when they host the Los Angeles Rams. Roland Thibert is a season ticket holder from Windsor, Ont., who’s says he can’t wait.
“He’d have been very emotional,” she said about Sunday’s game. “You’ve been through it so, so long, and you’ve seen them when they’ve been zero and you keep on coming back.”
Gauthier said that after years of going to games, fellow fans seated around her are like family. She recognizes her father in an older gentleman who now sits behind them at games with his own son.
“He kind of shakes everybody’s hand. He gets involved, just like my dad would have done,” she said.
“It’s almost like he’s right there with me too, because he’s doing the same actions as my dad would do.”
Season tickets like Gauthier’s rose in price this year. She said she knows fans who debated whether to keep their tickets after the price hike. There’s a long wait-list for fans clamouring to get their hands on the coveted tickets, which sold out this year.
But Gauthier said she’ll never give them up.
“I will continue as long as I continue. I have a daughter who is going to be 18 next month. She’s a soccer girl too. But she she loves her papa more than anything, and she will continue down that path.”
The Lions will host their next playoff game as well, this Sunday, in the divisional round against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
