ESKS SET FINAL ROSTER
Thompson fails to make cut
One of the wonderful things about a sports hall of fame is that long after an athlete’s career is complete, and long after they suspect they have been forgotten, the phone can ring.
While Jen Kish has been getting her due in her recent retirement, two years after captaining Canada to a rugby sevens bronze medal at the Rio Olympics, she’s not the only one entering the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame on Monday evening at the Winspear.
Wheelchair athlete Ron Minor and soccer star Janine Helland also got the call.
In their case, it’s like they’ve been taken out of the witness protection program and suddenly thrust back into the spotlight for a curtain call.
Minor’s career happened so long ago, he’s surprised anybody remembered him well enough to submit nomination papers.
“You have to remember, the stuff that I did was way back in the ’70s and ’80s. It’s long past my glory years,” said the 61-yearold who competed in a total of 10 different events over his five trips to the Paralympics, setting world records in the 200-, 400- and 800-metre events.
His defining moment came in a race in Belgium, he believes, although there was no gold at the end of the rainbow.
“It was the first time they had wheelchair racers in that famous track meet in 1979 and they invited only eight of us from around the world. Just before the race, I ran over a board at the edge of the track with a nail in it and punctured my tire. It was right before we were to start the race. I only had time to wrap some tape around it. I raced with a flat tire and ended up second. I was only a tenth of a second out of first place. I won a lot of respect over that.”
A polio victim as a child, Minor grew up to be a founding member of the Northern Lights wheelchair basketball team that used to play in a U.S. league and throughout the world. He now coaches the modern day version of the Northern Lights that plays a much more modest, mostly regional schedule.
For Helland, her time was more recent, but was followed by spectacular success, with much of it happening right here in Edmonton. Hers was a different brand of anonymity.
Helland played in two Women’s World Cup soccer championships, captaining Canada in USA 1999. She and her groundbreaking teammates were the forerunners to Christine Sinclair and today’s Olympic medal-winning Northern Girls.
“It never crossed my mind to even be considered for the hall of fame,” she said. “I look at those people on the wall at city hall and I think, ‘Look at those people.’ I never really saw myself as being one of them. I was shocked. I was literally shocked.”
Helland played 47 games for Canada from 1990-99 after playing for the U of A Pandas. She was elected to the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame and went on to serve as a member of the national organizing committee for the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup. She also represented women’s soccer on FIFA.
Being in the soccer hall isn’t the same as this, she said.
“Soccer is soccer. We’ve had some big soccer moments in this city, but at the end of the day, soccer is not hockey or football.”
You would figure she might have felt cheated to have played before Sinclair and the girls came along.
“I don’t look back on it wistfully at all, wishing I’d come along 10 years later. I kind of feel proud of when I played and the things that we did and the messages we instilled in some of these players.
“Obviously it would have been cool to take two years to get 49 caps instead of 10 years to get 49 caps. But I still consider myself extremely fortunate and very lucky to have played when I played, and then to witness how the nation got behind women’s soccer in that 2000-2002 time frame and to be able to have had the roles I had since then. It was great.
“I finished in 1999 to start the family thing and then a few years later, I got the opportunity to join FIFA representing CONCACAF on their women’s committee in 2004. In my mind, everything just fell into my lap and I felt very fortunate to have been part of it all in that capacity.”
There will be one other person going into the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame on Monday.
That would be me. And I’m tickled to be going in with these three, and especially to be the first sportswriter to join all the greats in the hall, an astounding number of whom I feel privileged to have covered during their incredible careers.
You have to remember, the stuff that I did was way back in the ’70s and ’80s. It’s long past my glory years.