REGINA – Some Saskatchewan Roughriders fans are heading into Thursday’s matchup against the Edmonton Elks with conflicting emotions, after a player and one other man were killed in a highway crash.
For longtime Roughriders fan Kerri Ludvigsen, it’s the primary time in a long time a friend has told her she doesn’t feel like going to the sport.
“She said, ‘It’s going to be so hard and my mind is split about it,’” Ludvigsen said Wednesday.
“I told her that simply because something is difficult or a challenge or difficult doesn’t mean you walk away from it.”
The players and training staff need all of the support they’ll get, Ludvigsen added.
“(They) are grappling with a giant loss with more questions and uncertainty than we’re.”
Some in Rider Nation have been embroiled in online debates over the circumstances of the crash that killed Roughrider linebacker Jayden Dalke, 30, of Leduc, Alta., and Bhishma Rajyaguru, 22, of Regina.
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RCMP have said Dalke was driving on the unsuitable side of a divided highway Saturday night when his SUV smashed into one other SUV that Rajyaguru was driving. The vehicles had no passengers.
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Police also said alcohol and cannabis were present in Dalke’s SUV, which pulled out of a gas station with unpaid fuel a couple of half-hour before the crash.
Each Dalke and Rajyaguru died on the scene on Highway 11 near the town of Lumsden, northwest of Regina.
On various social media platforms and team fan forums, some have speculated whether Dalke was driving while impaired.
Mounties have said autopsies and toxicology tests are being conducted. A spokesperson with Saskatchewan’s justice ministry has said such results will not be publicly released because they contain personal health information.
Gerri Sernick, an administrator with the Saskatchewan Roughriders Fan Page on Facebook, said she has needed to remove nasty comments about Dalke, including that he doesn’t should be honoured by his team.
“It was truly awful. Since I began that page, I’ve never seen anything prefer it,” Sernick said in a message Tuesday.
“Judgment, speculation and hurtful remarks based on assumptions don’t have any place on this Saskatchewan Roughrider fan page.
“Whatever the circumstances, two young men will not be going home to their families, and that’s where our focus should remain.”
To maintain decorum, other fan pages and forums closed comment sections on some posts.
Ludvigsen said police set off a “firestorm” after they released the small print about alcohol and cannabis present in Dalke’s SUV.
“People grieving (now) need to see … messages which can be so hurtful and disrespectful,” she said.
The Roughriders have said they plan to honour each Dalke and Rajyaguru before Thursday’s game.
Additionally they shared a GoFundMe page for Rajyaguru’s family, which had raised greater than $88,000 as of Wednesday afternoon to cover the associated fee of repatriating his body to India.
Rajyaguru got here to Canada from the Indian state of Gujarat as a world student in 2022.
Jeremy O’Day, the Roughriders general manager, has said players are to wear Dalke’s initials on their helmets for the sport.
Ludvigsen said she plans on going together with her mother, and so they’ll wear black jerseys as an alternative of the Riders’ typical green and white.
“It’s going to be hard,” she said. “Honouring them each — I believe it’s great and needed.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 23, 2026.
© 2026 The Canadian Press