The Lakers, the defending North Shore league and playoff champs, defeated the eastern champion Fredericton Capitals from New Brunswick in three straight games at the Pacific Coliseum to claim the coveted 1980 Hardy Cup.

The Burnaby team defeated teams from Vernon, Prince Rupert and Port Alberni in separate series to win the provincial Coy Cup championship. They then moved on to beat two Alberta clubs in best-of-five series to take the Western Canadian title as well.

Ken Taylor is probably the most successful high school track and field coach in B.C. history. In his 33-years at Burnaby Central, Taylor won 15 provincial banners, was nine times a runner-up and three times placed third.

A Burnaby product and a star sprinter at Burnaby South, Taylor was named coach of the year in 1988. Four of Taylor’s athletes from Central have competed in the Olympic Games, most notably Dave Steen, who won a bronze medal in the decathlon in 1988.

Doug Abercrombie began his coaching career with the Edmonds Wasps under-14 girls team from 1977 to 1989. They won six provincial titles and the 1985 national championship.

Abercrombie served as head coach for girls teams in BC’s Select All-Star program fur U14 to U18 players during the 1980s and 1990s. He coached BC at the Western Canada Games and was involved in BC Youth Soccer’s girls north district administration.

In 1995, Abercrombie was named head coach of the Capilano College Blues women’s team. By the time he left the program in 2010, his teams had won eight provincial college titles and five national titles (1995, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2001) along with one second-place finish (1997). The career record for his teams at the national championship tournament was 19-5. He coached two Canadian College Athletic Association players of the year as well as 13 CCAA All-Canadians.

The long-time Burnaby resident has also coached at Simon Fraser University and with the Vancouver 86ers women’s team in 2000.

Abercrombie was inducted into the CCAA Hall of Fame (2017) and the Capilano University Sports Hall of Fame (2024). He passed away in January 2023. He was 78.

Ann Willcocks is considered “the godmother of netball in B.C.” having started the sport in the province here in Burnaby. The former Burnaby North High School principal coached the provincial team, starting in 1983, for four decades. She has taken Canada to international tournaments at least eight times, including the 1998 Commonwealth Games and the 1993 World Games, where they finished a best-ever fifth.

Willcocks has served as president of of BC Netball’s board of directors and has also spearheaded a grassroots program, mentoring players and introducing netball at both the elementary and secondary school levels. She has also worked as Netball Canada’s technical director.

Alex Kemp is a life member of the provincial and B.C. youth soccer associations. During his tenure on the board of directors of the Vancouver and District youth soccer (1951 to 1956) Kemp served for two years as chair of the provincial body. He also was secretary of the BCSA, coordinated the Sun Tournament of Champions, serving on the committee from 1952 until 1986.

The native of Aberdeen, Scotland was secretary of BC Soccer for 27 years (1971 to 1998), and a director of BC Youth Soccer from 1959 to 1967. He refereed youth soccer starting in 1954 until 1980.

Kemp was a member of a Canada Soccer youth sub-committee that helped establish the Canadian Youth Soccer Association and was its general secretary from 1969 to 1971.

He received Canada Soccer’s Award of Merit in 1996 and the BC Soccer A.C. Sanford Award in 1998.

Kemp was also a successful coach with North Burnaby Legion youth, guiding the team to a Provincial Cup title.

After joining the Burnaby Lake Rowing Club in 1977, Richard (Dick) McClure went on to be considered the “Boatman at Burnaby Lake.”

Rowing British Columbia said McClure “built a program, repaired boats and coached athletes from recreational to elite, for over three decades.” He also provided financial support and opened his home to young underprivileged athletes who needed assistance.

The former silver medal-winning rower at the 1956 Olympic Games, also has 33 years of coaching rowing on his resume, which includes a bronze medal for national men’s team at the ’84 Olympics and a fifth in the earlier world championships.

As a development coach for the Canadian National Rowing Team, McClure worked with a host of Olympic medal winners, including gold medallist Kathleen Heddle of Vancouver, also taking national team crews to the 1996 Olympics. He was inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame in 1999. 

As one of its members, the 1956 Olympic team he was on has been inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame (1958), the BC Sports Hall of Fame (1976) and the University of British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame (2010). A rowing scholarship at Simon Fraser University is named in his honour.

McClure also served on the executive of the provincial rowing association.

McClure passed away in May 2024. He was 89.

Len Walters won the Canadian open bantamweight championship in 1949 and 1952. He amassed an amateur record of 139-10 and a pro record of 14-4 in a 13-year boxing career. Walters won four B.C. senior and two national titles, while also capturing the U.S. featherweight title in 1951, only the third Canadian to do so.

He competed for Canada at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games in the 1950s. He is the father of fellow Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame honoured member Dale Walters. They were both inducted in 2003.

During Dale Walters’ 15-year amateur career he was never beaten by a Canadian boxer. Further, he never lost an amateur bout (including international competitions) on Canadian soil. The five-time national champion had a career record of 165 wins and 12 losses and was selected most outstanding boxer at three national championships.

Walters won a bronze medal as a bantamweight at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984. It was Canada’s first Olympic boxing medal in 52 years. Walters then fought professionally and finished his career with a record of seven wins and one loss. He was inducted into the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame in 1996 and the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. https://bcsportshall.com/honoured_member/dale-walters/

He also worked as a boxing analyst for television and radio broadcasts throughout his career.

Christine Sinclair was introduced to the globe’s No. 1 sport when she was just a tyke tagging along to her older brother Mike’s soccer games. That little girl would go from climbing on top of a ball on the sidelines of Burnaby’s pitches to become futbol’s most prolific international scorer. Ever. Man or woman.

Soccer was in her DNA. Her father Bill played it in college. Her mother was a coach. Her uncles, Brian and Bruce Gant, played professionally in the North American Soccer League. So it was no surprise when she began playing on the South Burnaby Metro Club’s under-7 team at the tender age of four.

By the time she was 11, Sinclair was playing on British Columbia’s under-14 squad. She helped her club team, Burnaby Girls Soccer Club, win six league titles and five provincial titles and capture two top 5 national finishes. And despite all her club commitments Sinclair found time to play for her school, Burnaby South, leading the Rebels to three league titles and a spot in the 1999 provincial high school final.

A year later, however, Sinclair couldn’t play in the provincial championship because she was playing for the national women’s team. She was only 16 years old! By the time 2000 came to a conclusion, she had scored 15 goals in 18 international games for Canada and was named Canadian Player of the Year by Soccer Canada for the first of 14 times, including 11 in a row (2004 to 2014).

Sinclair’s collegiate career was spent at the University of Portland where she led the Pilots to two NCAA national titles (2002, 2005). During her tenure there, not only was Sinclair named the top female college soccer player in the United States in both 2004 and 2005 she was also awarded the Honda-Broderick Cup as the top female athlete in all of the NCAA sports in 2005-06.

By the time 2008 rolled around, Sinclair’s sparkling play and prodigious goal scoring had led Canada’s women’s team to its first Olympic appearance in Beijing where the team finished eighth.

Although Sinclair’s prominence on the Canadian soccer scene was already well established it grew to legendary status in leading Canada to a bronze medal at the 2012 Olympics in London. She won the tournament’s Golden Boot award by scoring an Olympic record six goals, including all three in a wild and wacky 4-3 semifinal loss to the eventual gold medal winners from the United States before Canada edged France 1-0 for the bronze. Her on-field heroics earned her the right to be Canada’s flag bearer at the closing ceremonies.

By the time 2012 was history, Sinclair had scored 23 goals in 22 games and had become the first soccer player to win the Lou Marsh Trophy awarded to Canada’s best athlete of the year as well as the Bobbie Rosenfeld Award as Canada’s top female athlete.

Sinclair and Canada won bronze again at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil. That same year she was featured, along with soccer superstar Lionel Messi, on the front cover of the FIFA 16 video game produced by Burnaby’s EA Sports.

But her crowning triumph came in 2021 when Canada shocked the soccer world by going undefeated to capture the gold medal at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Along the way, Sinclair also played for Vancouver Whitecaps FC helping them win a USL W-League championship in 2006; FC Gold Pride, based in the San Francisco area, 2010 Women’s Professional Soccer champions; the 2011 WPS champion Western New York Flash; and the Portland Thorns leading them to the 2013 and 2017 National Women’s Soccer League titles.

The storied international soccer career of Christine Sinclair, who learned to play the game on the fields of Burnaby where she grew up, came to an end before more than 44,000 fans at BC Place on Dec. 5, 2023. She retired scoring the most goals (190) in FIFA history by either gender. Sinclair, who was inducted into the Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame in 2003, played 319 games for Canada beginning when she was 15 years old. Although Sinclair plans to play professionally for the Portland Thorns of the National Women’s Soccer League the Hall salutes her achievements and contributions to the sport and her country.

Sinclair stats

• The world’s most prolific international soccer player in history with 190 goals in 319 games

• Helped lead Canada to Olympic bronze medals at 2012 and 2016 Summer Games, and gold medal at the 2020 Games held in Tokyo in 2021

• Canada’s soccer player of the year 14 times

• Golden Boot FIFA U-19 Women’s World Cup in Edmonton 2002

• NCAA’s top female soccer player 2004, 2005

• NCAA’s top female athlete 2005-2006 season

• Three-time NWSL champion with Portland Thorns

• Canada’s female athlete of the year 2012

• Lou Marsh Trophy winner as Canada’s athlete of the year 2012

• Canada’s soccer player of the decade (2019)

• CONCACAF team of the decade (2011-2020)

• Canada’s Walk of Fame (2013)

• Officer, Order of Canada (2017)

Bill Dickinson, a life-long North Burnaby resident, began his senior lacrosse career in 1935 with the Richmond Farmers as a 16-year-old, and became an immediate impact player. He played 16 years in the Inter-City Lacrosse League, scoring 618 goals and 230 assists in 398 games, in an era when there were no double assists.

At the time of his induction his 948 career points was 17th overall and 31st in games played. He was not only a phenomenal offensive player, but just as great on defence as his 627 minutes in penalties would attest. When Bill finished his playing career, he went on to refereeing, coaching (Minto Cup winning Norburn Eagletime 1949 team), and serving as a lacrosse league commissionaire.

He was also a founding member of the Norburn Athletic Club. Dickinson was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1965 and two years later into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame.