Article content material
By Kellen Forrest for Dinos Athletics
The identify Hayley Wickenheiser wants no introduction to Canadians.
Probably the greatest Canadian athletes ever and the best ladies’s hockey participant of all-time, Wickenheiser is not any stranger to accolades, each on and off the ice.
However when she received the decision that she was going to be inducted into the College of Calgary Dinos Corridor of Fame as a part of the Class of 2024, it actually hit residence for the sports activities legend.
Commercial 2
Article content material
“It’s one thing that’s very close to and expensive to my coronary heart,” Wickenheiser, BKin’13, MSc’16, Hon. LLD’18, MD’21, stated on the induction. “I’m very honoured … I’ve lots of love for the College of Calgary. It’s been actually good to me over time.”
Her time with the College of Calgary was so good to her, actually, that Wickenheiser referred to as being a student-athlete with the Dinos the perfect job of her life.
“You learn to handle your time, be disciplined,” Wickenheiser stated. “I at all times say that it’s the best job an individual can have is being a student-athlete. It’s the best job I’ll ever have.”
That’s fairly one thing coming from a person whose resume consists of 5 Olympic medals (4 gold, one silver), seven world championship gold medals, and who’s presently each a physician and an assistant basic supervisor with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
However Wickenheiser would be the first to confess that her time on the College of Calgary was key to serving to her develop into the well-rounded and achieved individual she is right this moment.
“I exploit the abilities (realized whereas being a Dinos student-athlete) each single day, whether or not I’m, you already know, in the course of an emergency within the emergency division, or I’m on the ice with a John Tavares,” Wickenheiser defined. “You learn to be a part of a workforce and I used to be part of lots of nice groups by these years, I actually loved it.”
Midday Information Roundup
Article content material
Commercial 3
Article content material
By way of her on-ice success with the Dinos, Wickenheiser delivered in each manner.
Throughout her time as a Dino, she performed 68 regular-season video games, scoring 134 factors (1.97 factors per recreation), and introduced the ladies’s hockey program each its first Canada West and U SPORTS championships in 2012.
Wickenheiser joined this system in 2010-11 after successful her fourth Olympic gold medal on the 2010 Video games in Vancouver. She gave a right away enhance to this system, taking a workforce that completed with a 7-17 convention document the earlier 12 months, to a 16-8 document and a Canada West playoff look. Her inaugural season additionally noticed Wickenheiser take residence each the Canada West Participant of the Yr and the U SPORTS Participant of the Yr honours.
The most important recreation of her Dinos profession got here within the U SPORTS championship in 2012 hosted by the College of Alberta, the place she scored two objectives and two assists within the gold-medal recreation, giving the Dinos the 5-1 win over the Montreal Carabins and bringing residence the nationwide championship to Calgary.
Wickenheiser is not any stranger to a hockey recreation with lots on the road, however that one in Edmonton was proper up there for her by way of significance.
Commercial 4
Article content material
“It was as critical and as vital to me as any Olympics or a world championship simply because it was the primary and, you already know, it’s vital, these are a giant deal,” Wickenheiser stated.
The win was additional candy for Wickenheiser as she took some additional motivation from the truth that some doubted whether or not she needs to be suiting up with the Dinos.
“There have been lots of people saying I shouldn’t be allowed to play U SPORTS,” Wickenheiser stated. “I bear in mind one poster within the rink at U of A which stated, ‘if you happen to’re in our textbooks, you shouldn’t be in our league.’
“No one needed us to win. And so I needed us to win, after all. And so there was that, like, let’s do one thing right here that hasn’t been completed. And I took lots of pleasure in that workforce and successful that championship.”
Wickenheiser breathed new life into the Dinos ladies’s hockey program, however she is aware of she didn’t do it alone. She credited her teammates, former Dinos head coach and Wickenheiser’s Canadian nationwide workforce teammate Danielle Goyette and former Dean of Kinesiology Penny Werthner, simply to call a couple of.
Wickenheiser additionally made certain to single out the late Joan Snyder for her beneficiant donations and assist she gave the Dinos ladies’s hockey program for greater than twenty years.
One in all Canada’s best athletes of all-time will formally be immortalized within the Dinos Corridor of Fame later this month together with a legendary class. And with the time she spent as a Dino,
Commercial 5
Article content material
Wickenheiser is aware of that there might be loads of wonderful athletes to affix her and her fellow inductees sooner or later.
“There’s such a breadth and depth of athletes, coaches and builders which have come to the College of Calgary,” Wickenheiser stated. “The college has fostered form of this cool tradition, and I hope that they’ll proceed to draw and retain nice athletes.”
The opposite members of the Class of 2024 are:
- Sam Effah — Athlete (monitor& area)
- Dan Federkeil — Athlete (soccer)
- Erica Wiebe — Athlete (wrestling)
- Les Gramantik – Coach (monitor & area)
- Gord Franson — Builder (soccer)
The induction ceremony might be held on Monday, Oct. 28, on the Fairmont Palliser. Tickets can be found at have interaction.ucalgary.ca/dinoshalloffame2024
Article content material
