The Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame is proud to announce the selection of Regan Kjargaard of Saskatoon into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame on Aug. 20 in Battleford.
Kjargaard was born on Oct. 25, 1961 and grew up on the family farm on Highway 40, east of North Battleford. Kjargaard started playing baseball with the Battleford Community Youth Club organization. After playing bantam age baseball, he joined the North Battleford Junior Beavers, a young team playing against grown men in the North Saskatchewan River Baseball League, where everything from skill development, understanding the game, the positions and the importance of physical fitness, was initiated.
As the years rolled by, he added experience to his natural baseball talent and developed into the player to hit in the middle of the lineup and pitch the important games. It was in the Bison age group that the team got their first Provincial Championship, beating a Regina team in the final.
These same teams competed for many years, and in 1978 the Beavers were again crowned the provincial champions. That same year the team won the Western Championship and took third in the Canadian Championships. The team was again the Provincial Champions in 1980. In 1998, the 1978, 1979 and 1980 North Battleford Junior Baseball Team was inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame.
Kjargaard was voted top batter and the most valuable player in the North Battleford Beavers Championship Tournament in 1980, and then made the All-Star team at Westerns in Kamloops that same year. He attended many Western and Canadian Championships as a pick up for other teams and also attended a few Cincinnati Red tryout camps. In 1981 he was awarded a baseball scholarship to attend Missouri Western State College, in St. Joseph. Missouri. In his freshman year, he pitched with a 5-3 record along with a respectable 3.41 earned run average.
At that point Kjargaard chose to return to Saskatchewan. He settled in Saskatoon and became a member of the Saskatoon Nationals, a team that became a perennial contender and two time provincial champions in Saskatchewan Major Baseball League. He became a league all-star and batted .431 in 1985.
After that team folded in 1987, Kjargaard continued to play senior ball and was added to the Western and Canadian Championship rosters with teams from around the province until his playing days ended in 1992.
When his son began playing baseball, Kjargaard began coaching and found it to be every bit as fulfilling as playing the game. He continued coaching his son’s team through Mosquito, Bantam and Midget, with four of the team members graduating to the Saskatoon Yellow Jackets team where he became the assistant coach and eventually became the head coach. Kjargaard said that things came full circle when his son followed in his footsteps.
Kjargaard credited everything in his formative years to the time spent with the North Battleford Junior Beavers baseball club and the commitment of the coach, Bob Colliar, that ingrained into Kjargaard thoughts and beliefs, the love of the game of baseball and giving back.
