The Class of 2017
Six individuals, two teams become the latest inductees into Welland Sports Wall of Fame
Welland: Where sports and potential meet, and where talent takes off.
That’s not the official slogan for Niagara’s third-largest municipality, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to the 2017 Welland Sports Wall of Fame induction ceremony at Seaway Mall.
Six individuals and two teams were enshrined, and speaker after speaker touched on the important roll their hometown played in their success, both on and off the field.
“Guess what, I’m home again,” said Bette Kalailieff, a women’s softball trailblazer who moved to Port Colborne in 1951 but never forget her Rose City roots.
Her lifelong love affair with sports began when she started playing basketball as a student at Ross Public School, the only elementary school with a gym at the time.
Kalailieff said the encouragement she received from coaches and teachers at the school, as well as the important lessons in teamwork are things she took, and takes, to heart.
“Nobody becomes good by themselves, you need a team, you need a family.”
Like Kalailieff, Soccer Canada chief marketing officer Sandra Gage was inducted as a builder, for basketball, figure skating and soccer. The Ottawa resident, also like Kalailieff, felt right at home in Welland though she hasn’t lived here for about 30 years.
“Although you might leave the city, it never leaves you,” she said.
The same is true of the role sports plays in her life.
“Sport has always been a big part of my life,” Gage said. “It defined my growing up, and it still does today.”
Except for four years living in Brampton while teaching high school in Streetsville, Richard Hales never left home. He was inducted as a builder for an eightyear stint as Welland Slo-Pitch Association president, and for growing the league to 60 from 10 teams and bringing the Ontario Slo-Pitch Championship to Welland in 1981.
An explosion in the game’s interest coincided with the beginning of a marked decline in manufacturing jobs, especially in the steel industry.
Hales, who was working as a production planner at Atlas Steels before going to Brock University to study teaching, likened his position in the Atlas office to being “on the deck of the Titantic.”
“You could feel it coming, a lot of people were losing their jobs,” he said.
Looking back, Hales felt making slo-pitch more accessible to recreational players was important for physical, and mental, well-being.
“People needed something to do, they needed something to be happy about.”
At its heyday, slo-pitch needed to hold three year-end banquets.
“There wasn’t a hall large enough to hold us all,” Hales said. “There was a spirit in the city that Welland wasn’t going to give up.”
Niagara Centre MP Vance Badawey, who attended university in the U.S. on a hockey scholarship, said he always “feels something about Welland,” even when he’s in Ottawa as a Liberal backbencher or at home in Port Colborne with his family.
“I feel Welland every single day — scars, broken bones, they all happened to me in Welland,” he said with a laugh while delivering greetings from the federal government.
Badawey said Welland has become known internationally for sports.
Speaking as a former athlete, he said sports teaches invaluable lessons in teamwork and character.
“It’s the character people live with for the rest of their lives,” Badawey said.
I feel Welland every single day — scars, broken bones, they all happened to me in Welland.” Niagara Centre MP Vance Badawey
Paul Grenier, who represents Welland on regional council, called the sports wall of fame “unique” in that builders and volunteers aren’t lost in the shadow of athletes.
“Everybody’s contribution is equal,” he said. “There are the people who played sports and there are the contributors who made sure young people could play sports.”
Grenier said he discovered at an early age that he wasn’t going to leave his mark as an athlete.
“So I got into politics, which is essentially team sports for geeks,” he quipped.
Also inducted as a builder as part of the Class of 2017 was Lou Pelino, for minor baseball and minor hockey, while Mike Hominuck Jr. and Dave Picton are going on the wall as athletes.
Hominuck won six Canadian lacrosse championships — four indoor, two field — and played professionally for 11 seasons in the National Lacrosse League.
Picton won a national championship with Brock University in 1992, played on the Canadian national team and spent nearly three seasons competing in a pro league in Germany. His No. 5 jersey has been retired by Notre Dame College School, while No. 31 has been retired by Brock University in his honour.
Twin brothers Tom and Robb Blacquiere were inducted as a men’s pair in rowing and, along with twin brothers Jamie and Jeff Jocsak, Chris Bonfoco, Craig Green, Sarah and Steve Montgomery and Mike Thibeault combined to win five gold medals for the South Niagara Rowing Club at the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in 1996.
TVCogeco’s broadcast of the ceremony will be aired Thursday at 7 p.m., and Sunday at 1 p.m. and 9 p.m.