Leaving a lasting impact
Marg Derbyshire, Larry Godin honoured at Medicine Hat Sports Wall of Fame induction ceremony
The wall just couldn’t wait any longer.
One year after being unveiled as the newest inductees of the Medicine Hat Sports Wall of Fame, local builders Marg Derbyshire and Larry Godin had their names immortalized in front of a small crowd of friends, colleagues and family on Thursday evening at the Family Leisure Centre.
“It is really very overwhelming because I’m involved in organizing sport, not playing,” said Derbyshire. “It’s just so nice that people would recognize someone behind the scenes. I’m not a real limelight person, so it’s rather overwhelming, but I’m so honoured.”
Both Godin and Derbyshire had 25 guests in attendance, but Godin says he managed to get his whole family, from across the country, to experience the moment together via Zoom.
“That meant a lot to me,” said Godin. “My wife has family in St. John, N.B., my second son is in Surrey and my other one is in Kelowna, and there’s other people as well.”
Godin and Derbyshire have both been key faces in Medicine Hat’s sports community for decades. Godin has been involved in coaching and refereeing in all areas of hockey — from peewee house league to reffing sledge hockey at the 1998 Paralympics in Nagano — while Derbyshire has helped organize many of the city’s most notable sporting events in recent memory.
Derbyshire retired from teaching in 2000, but she still serves as secretary-treasurer for the South Zone Junior High Athletic Association, Rotary Track manager for Medicine Hat Track and Field Society, co-chair of the Comfort Quilts committee of the Cactus Rose Quilters’ Guild and South Zone secretary-treasurer for the Alberta Schools Athletic Association — a title she’s held since the inception of the zone in 1984.
“We do it for the kids, we all do. A lot of these friends of mine are teachers or coaches, and we’re all doing it just to give back to the kids and make their experience a positive one,” said Derbyshire, whose induction began while the Medicine Hat Panthers Track
Club practised upstairs. “It was so special, those kids came running over.”
Derbyshire has held a number of other various organizational positions over the years with the Alberta Summer Games, Continental Cup of Curling, ASAA track and golf, Alberta Special Olympics and 55-Plus Summer Games, to name a few.
While she says she isn’t one for the limelight, her contributions have been noticed on a variety of scales. Derbyshire was inducted to the ASAA High School Sports
Hall of Fame in 2011, while the provincial 1A and 2A girls golf trophy and McCoy’s annual home volleyball tournament are both named after her.
“That Marg lady, wow,” said Godin, adding he got to know Derbyshire in the year since they were announced as inductees. “Any time that we talked together, I knew that we thought alike,”
Not unlike his fellow inductee, Godin’s contributions to
Medicine Hat’s sports community are nearly endless. The Level III coach and official was behind the bench or on the ice in roughly 2,200 games — at times averaging 100-200 per year — since the 1980s, and he remains a key figure in building female hockey and sledge hockey in the Gas City.
Godin used his time at the podium not to speak of himself, but rather to praise those who made it out to support him on his big night, just like they had in the days, months and years leading up to his induction.
“I didn’t want to talk about me, other people have. They came out and everyone was picked especially for a reason,” said Godin, who also spent 30 years as Medicine Hat’s city clerk, as well as countless hours mentoring young referees and volunteering with the Hockey Hounds.
“I hope they felt they were part of my night.”