BOULDER – Steven Montez paid tribute to his fraternity, Sigma Pi, on Saturday after scoring his first rushing touchdown of the season for the Colorado Buffaloes. What he didn’t know at the time, was that he was paying tribute to the loss of a fraternity brother that passed away on Friday evening.
Eric Chase Bolling, a member of Sigma Pi at CU, died of a drug overdose according to TMZ on Friday afternoon. Bolling was struggling with his father’s, Eric Bolling Sr., ousting at Fox News.
“I ended up throwing the Sig Pi up after the touchdown,” Montez said. “Which was for a different mindset that I had. After the game, I wanted to pay my respects to Eric and his family and also just the brotherhood we have.”
Montez scored from two yards out on a read option design. After making it across the goal line, Montez put up the ‘sigma’ with his right hand and a ‘pi’ with his left in honor of the fraternity that he joined last school year.
“I had been telling the frat guys, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna throw it up, for sure, first rushing touchdown I got it’s for you.’ So it kind of just happened like that out of coincidence,” Montez explained. “I didn’t know before the game that Eric had passed away but it was kind of just one of those things. It sort of felt special afterward like wow that was really relevant to the situation.”
It was after the game that Montez had found out about his brother’s passing. It’s not every day that a college student hears about the death of one of his friends.
“I was just in shock when Nick told me like, man are you serious?” Montez said when asked about his reaction. “I had seen the guy at parties and had known him, I’ve talked to him before. I was kind of just shell shocked, didn’t really comprehend what was going on.”
After Montez had found out, he posted on Instagram the picture of him throwing up the Sigma Pi hand sign with a caption that read, “Rest In Peace Brother.”
The starting quarterback said that the Bolling family will be in his thoughts a lot this week.
“We’re praying for you all,” Montez said talking about the Bolling family. “We’re trying to send our thoughts and prayers to you guys, we know you’re going through a tough time with this and just stay strong.”
