On Friday, August 15, the Yorkton Sports Hall of Fame and Museum committee released the names of the six inductees whose names will be forever immortalized within the hallowed halls of the Yorkton Sports Hall of Fame.
In total five individuals and one team will be inducted this year, with current Yorkton Terrier General Manager Don Chesney leading the way as an athlete/builder in the sport of Hockey.
Joining him in the Hall of Fame in 2014 will be Bryce Jacobs (Builder, Baseball), Blaine Knoll (Athlete/Builder, Football), Mike Matich (Athlete/Builder, Gymnastics), Larry Popein (Athlete, Hockey) and the 2002-2003 Yorkton Harvest hockey team.
"We are proud to welcome the Class of 2014 into the Yorkton Sports Hall of Fame," offered Jerry Kobylka, Chairperson of the Yorkton Sports HOF. "Their achievements are all substantial and it's a nice, diverse group of athletes and teams and builders."
Kobylka also mentioned that, while sometimes it's tough to decide whether or not the person is deserving of a spot in the Hall of Fame, this time around every nominee was more than qualified, making the whole process very easy. "It really was easy for us to induct them as they had all scored very well in our process and that made it easy," suggested Kobylka, adding that there are criteria that the nominees must meet, as well as a process and formula they have to go through to make sure they are, in fact, deserving of a spot in the HOF.
Within that process, Kobylka says, is the ability to provide hard facts on what the athlete or builder has done for their sport, not just in the community but nationally or internationally as well, which is something that the people who nominated the Class of 2014 did extremely well. "We need specific dates, paper clippings, articles or something like that that can substantiate for insurance purposes too and for credibility that these athletes actually did that," mentioned Kobylka, adding that: "For someone like Larry Popein it was easy as he had statistics from his NHL career and it's easy to find that kind of information but for amateur sports people it gets harder yet it still got done."
Request for future inductees
In addition to inducting the Class of 2014 into the Yorkton Sports Hall of Fame and Museum, the Yorkton Sports HOF has asked that if any community member has someone they'd like to nominate for the Class of 2016 that they should do so by picking up a nomination form, which are available in City Hall at the City of Yorkton Leisure Services department.
The HOF board also stresses that nominees do not have to be professional athletes; they only need to be heavily involved (past or present), in their chosen sport. "I think the community should keep that in mind too when submitting applications. It couldn't hurt to nominate some amateur sports," suggested Kobylka. "We have synchronized swimming in here and an athlete that was inducted for water skiing so it's not just limited to main stream sports like hockey or baseball."
