Basketball
Jessica Vliegenhart
Year of Induction: 2023
Vliegenhart survived a spinal cord injury, but it propelled her into a tremendous career with Basketball Canada winning 3 Wheelchair Nationals with team BC as well as gold with Team Canada and silver twice with the national team at 2 Parapan Games. Jessica is a lawyer with Fulton and Co. She and her husband Jon are raising two girls and she is a driving force in the adaptive sports community. She has been honoured with special awards in BC and Canada for he work in many areas.
Running
Gary Reed
Year of Induction: 2023
Reed excelled in middle distance running, competing in two Olympics in 2004 and 2008. He missed out on a bronze by a fraction of a second in Beijing, finishing 4th in the 800 metres. His track record included 6 Canadian championships, 6 World championship appearances, winning silver in 2007, a year before his last trip to the Olympics. He retired at the age of 29 and is currently a realtor raising a family in Kamloops.
Community Builder
Doug Collins
Year of Induction: 2023
Collins is a retired old school broadcaster whose sports plate was always full because of his love of the game, whatever the game. In many cases it was always on a volunteer basis in high school football and minor baseball, which he structurized to make it more organized and a better development model for years to come. He was always on the spot helping out many sports organizations during close to 50 years of service Collins retired last year after working with the Jim Pattison Group as News Director.
Team
Kamloops International Baseball Tournament – Team of Volunteers
Year of Induction: 2023
Since 1973, the Kamloops International Baseball Tournament (KIBT) Team of Volunteers have worked tirelessly to keep the mid-summer classic. For forty-nine years, a team of fourteen people, including tournament co-founders Lynn Bylund, Art Worth, and Gary Cameron who envisioned hosting the best semi-professional baseball tournament. Other influential individuals include Pat Swaine, Donna Hagen, Fran Pope, John Braun and Dean Padar, who worked on the tournament until his passing in June of 2019. Current members of the tournament executive are Wayne and Jan Harper, Tom Blair, Linda Coutts and Ron Masson. The fourteen member team is rounded out by Verna Desjardins and Diane Wells who made significant impacts on the KIBT executive for several years. Baseball fans from Kamloops, all of British Columbia, Alberta and the Pacific Northwest have made their way to Canada’s Tournament Capital for this event.