Douglas Strohan:
Sport – Baseball.
School – Byrne Creek

Gabriela de Sousa:
Sport – Judo.
School – St. Thomas More

Walt Brandl coached rugby in Burnaby for more than 20 years with outstanding success, bringing international acclaim to Burnaby, his hometown, and the Burnaby Lake Rugby Club.

Following successful coaching career with men’s teams, winning three Fraser Valley championships, two Miller Cups and two Provincial championships, Brandl turned his attention to Burnaby women’s program where he led his teams, at the time of his induction, to five Provincial championships, BC’s first national women’s title and a win over Japan’s national side in 2009, still today the only time in Canadian rugby history a senior women’s club side has defeated a national team.

Jack Taunton was considered one of the top sport medicine doctors in North America. Among his many achievements, Taunton worked with Canada’s teams at eight Olympic Games and was the chief medical officer for Canada at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

Taunton was then the chief medical officer for the entire 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver which was the first Games the International Olympic Committee’s Medical Commission did not didn’t make a single complaint. 

He served as team physician for both the Vancouver Grizzlies during their time in the NBA and the Vancouver Canucks of the NHL as well as the national women’s field hockey team for 24 years.

The former marathon runner coordinated the medical portion of Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion World Tour in the late 1980s, even running alongside Hansen’s wheelchair for nearly 100-kilometres a day in Saskatchewan. 

Taunton also helped found the Vancouver Sun Run and the Vancouver Marathon. He was part of the group that founded and built the Fortius Sport Health Centre, now the Christine Sinclair Community Centre, in Burnaby’s Central Valley. As Fortius’s medical director, Taunton was responsible for creating an integrated sports medicine concept.

Taunton founded many initiatives including SportMedBC and the BC Brain Wellness Program. He served at hundreds of other events locally and abroad and on over 50 provincial, national, and international medical committees relating to sport. 

In June 2024, Taunton was appointed to the Order of Canada. He died in October of that year. He was 77.

Ted Barton radically changed the figure skating landscape in British Columbia when he was instrumental in establishing the Burnaby Skate Canada Centre of Excellence, considered one of the finest figure skating training centres in the world.

Barton was most notably, one of the architects of the sport’s new scoring system. After a judging scandal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in which Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were the victims of questionable scoring, Barton was chosen by the International Skating Union to figure out why it happened and how to fix it. That resulted in important changes to the scoring system the likes that hadn’t been in nearly a century.

A former national junior skating champion and coach (12 of his athletes became national team members), Barton continued to improve the sport through his outstanding technical skills. A whiz at video production he developed a instant replay system for judging panels, which was adopted by the International Skating Union as well as CBC and CTV.

His latest “invention” was live streaming of skating events throughout the country. He became the executive director of the BC-Yukon Skate Canada Section. 

Barton attracted elite coach Joanne McLeod, a Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame honoured member (2005) to the centre based at Burnaby 8-Rinks, now called Scotia Barn. Later he brought in well-regarded Bruno Marcotte and Victor Kraatz to run the pairs and ice dance programs.

Barton was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.

During Michelle Hendry’s four years at Simon Fraser University, the team went 110 wins, 23 losses with three conference championships and three trips to the NAIA championships.

She finished her career as the all-time leading scorer in SFU women’s basketball history, 3,152 points. At the time there were only four other female players who had scored more points in the NCAA, NAIA and CIU. During her SFU playing days she averaged 24.6 points per game and holds the record for the most points scored in a season, 879.

She was twice named NAIA Player of the Year and was a two-time All-American, three-time first team NAIA All-American and was named SFU’s Athlete of the Year three times. She also played on Canada’s national women’s team over 15 years playing in 110 international games.

Hank Grenda is an accomplished all-round athlete in football, baseball, basketball, lacrosse, soccer and hockey who took his talent to coaching as well at the high school and college level. He played and starred on Burnaby championship teams in soccer, baseball and football, the latter his best known sport.

As the quarterback for Burnaby Central Secondary he led them to league championships in 1964 and 1965 and as a result drew attention from scouts from American Universities and BC Lions, a team he played for in 1969 as backup quarterback and punter, the first Burnaby athlete signed by the Lions.

He also enjoyed a career with Washington State University from 1965-1969 as quarterback, punter and field goal kicker. Grenda became a beloved teacher and coach in the Kelowna area after his career. He passed away of a heart attack in 2006. He was 58.

Dave Chavarria was an outstanding high school athlete in track, soccer and basketball, where in 1991 he was selected the school’s outstanding Athlete of the Year, it was baseball where he was to make his name.

A member of the Canada West under-17 championship team and for two years the under-18 squad, he was a member of the Canadian national junior team that finished fourth in the World championships in Cuba in 1990, as a high school student, and was signed by the Texas Rangers the following year.

He was traded by Texas to San Francisco. The Giants subsequently sent him to Seattle and the Mariners ended up trading him back to Texas where during an 11-year career he played at all levels including one major league exhibition start. He was the Rangers’ pitching coach from 2002 to 2006. He spent 11 seasons as a coach in the Rangers system before moving on to the Milwaukee Brewers organization (2012-2018).

Jason Delesalle is a Burnaby Central Secondary grad who won a gold medal in the pentathlon at the 1996 Paralympic Games, setting a Games record 3.050 points. He also won a bronze medal in discus at the same Games.

Under the tutelage of legendary athletics coach Don Steen, an honoured member of the Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame, Delesalle won a silver medal in javelin at the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics. At the 1990 International Blind Sports World Youth Games, he won silver medals in the 100- and 200-metre races and the long jump. Between 1992 and 2003 Delesalle won multiple national championships.

At the time of his induction, Delesalle was both the BC and Canadian record holder in the pentathlon for visually impaired men and a past recipient of BC Athletics Physically Disabled Athlete of the Year.

Delesalle was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 2021.