UVic hall to welcome Turney-Loos, McKay and Hansen

Two-time Olympian Carol TurneyLoos, described as the greatest women’s basketball player to play at the University of Victoria and one of the best ever in Canada, will be inducted into the UVic Sports Hall of Fame.

All three members of the Class of 2017 — former basketball stars Turney-Loos and Spencer McKay and runner Ulla Hansen — were internationals.

The Class is the 15th to be enshrined by UVic, with the induction ceremonies part of the Vikes awards banquet April 5 at the Victoria Conference Centre.

“Carol Turney-Loos is without question the best [female] basketball player to play at UVic,” said former Vikes men’s coach Ken Shields. “She made plays other players couldn’t make.”

Turney-Loos played for Canada at the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics. She helped lead Canada to the bronze medal at the 1979 world championships but was denied the chance at the Olympic podium in 1980 because of the boycott of the Moscow Games. (Those athletes who qualified for Moscow are officially listed as Olympians by the COC).

Turney-Loos led the Vikes to the Canadian university championships in both her dazzling seasons at UVic, capping it by being named national MVP in taking the Vikes to the Canadian title in 1980. Including two earlier seasons at UBC, she is the all-time pointsper-game scoring leader in Canada West history with a 21.1 average and is third all-time in field goals made with 649.

“Carol’s work ethic was second to none,” said Kathy Shields, who coached Turney-Loos at UVic.

McKay was a versatile, even elegant, player inside. He was a five-time Canada West all-star. The only other Vikes player to accomplish that was point-guard and two-time Olympian Eli Pasquale.

McKay was also three-times all-Canadian and is the all-time Vikes men’s hoops scoring leader with 1,657 career points and is 10th all-time in Canada West points-per game scoring.

Internationally, McKay represented Canada at the Pan American Games, World University Games and FIBA world championships. He also played in the NBA Summer League.

“Spencer was a good all-round player with good interior fundamentals, plus he could shoot,” said Ken Shields, who coached McKay at UVic.

Hansen was known as Ulla Marquette during a standout high school career at Mount Douglas. She ran with that to five individual CIAU (now U Sports) national medals with UVic and two CIAU relay golds between cross country and track. Hansen’s international career culminated by representing Canada in the hometown 1994 Commonwealth Games. A tenacious competitor with multiple and varied skill sets, she represented Canada 18 times internationally in track, cross-country and road racing and was a threetime gold-medallist and nine-time medallist at the Canadian track and field championships. Hansen also won the Canadian 10K women’s road race championship three times.