Luca Bellini
Sport – Football
School – St. Thomas More.

Jacey Bailey
Sport – Basketball
School: Burnaby Mountain

Derek Evely graduated from Burnaby Central in 1983. During his years there, Ken Taylor passed his passion for track and field onto Evely. The young man blossomed into a decathlete, finishing sixth in the event at the 1983 World Junior Championships. In 1992, Taylor invited Evely to be his assistant.

The result was yet another provincial team title for the Wildcats, and a coaching guru was born. Evely eventually made his base in Kamloops becoming a national team coach at several international competitions including the Commonwealth (1998), Pan American (1997) and Olympic (2008) games as well as three world championships.

He was Athletics Canada’s national team relay coach (2001-2005) and the lead coach at the national sprint centre (2006-2009). Evely went on to run the United Kingdom’s national performance centre (2009-2012) and coached at the 2012 Olympics in London. His athletes have set 13 national records.

Eight have earned 33 national team positions and 10 have won 39 national titles. Four of his athletes have collected 13 international medals.

The late George Wong was a big contributor in the early years of the Burnaby Minor Hockey Association first becoming involved in 1965. He went on to volunteer as an amateur hockey coach, manager and executive member for 30 years.

Wong, who was born in China, became president of Burnaby Minor in 1971 and was named a BMHA honourary life member. In 1984, Wong was elected president of the B.C. Amateur Hockey Association and also served with the Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association.

In addition to hockey, George coached lacrosse in Burnaby for eight years. In 1993, the City of Burnaby awarded him its Mohawk Trophy for outstanding achievement as a sports builder.

Wong, who worked at BC Tel for more than 36 years after receiving a degree in electrical engineering from UBC in 1957, passed away in 2008 at the age of 80.

Duff Slavin, who moved to Burnaby with his wife Linda in 1968 and passed away in 1992, was instrumental in building softball on local, provincial and national levels.

The Softball BC Hall of Fame member was an administrator with Softball Canada from 1978 and 1987 overseeing numerous national championships – from midget/minor to senior men’s and women’s – across the country. He also took on the duties as treasurer of Softball Canada.

Slavin was on Softball BC’s board of directors from 1970 to 1983 and was one of the first organizers of coaching clinics across British Columbia in 1970 and continued to do them for may years to come.

At the local level, Slavin was a board member of the South Hill Sports Association from 1973 to 1987 that brought the 1977 women’s national championship to Vancouver’s South Memorial Park and Burnaby’s Central Park after it had been absent from the province for 10 years. Slavin was part of the group that transformed the South Memorial diamond into one of the sport’s best facilities.

In a sport built on respect, Burnaby’s Song Chul Kim receives plenty of it wherever he goes in the world of taekwondo. Kim has risen through the refereeing ranks to become vice-chair of the World Taekwondo Federation’s referee committee.

In his 35 years in the sport, Kim has officiated at competitions in every corner of the globe. His stops include Azerbaijan, Denmark, Mexico, China, Bangkok, Egypt, Puerto Rico and Peru – to name just a few – as well as the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London and the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

In December, Master Kim was named the federation’s male referee of the year. Thanks to the universal respect he has garnered over the decades, Kim was a big influence in helping Burnaby secure the 2016 World Junior Taekwondo Championships held in November. Kim has been the owner and operator of SC Kim’s Taekwondo in Burnaby since 1994.

He was secretary-treasurer (2000-2009) and vice-president (2009-2015) of the B.C. Taekwondo Federation before becoming the organization’s president, a position which he continues to hold.

A Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame inductee in 2016, Dan Stroup, played 13 NLL seasons winning three Champions Cup titles (1999, 2000 and 2002) with the Toronto Rock and a fourth with the Colorado Mammoth (2006). He was named the most valuable player in the 2000 NLL championship game.

He played for the WLA’s Coquitlam Adanacs in three Mann Cup finals winning in 2001. Stroup sniped 320 goals and racked up 556 points in 224 WLA games. Stroup, who played all of his minor and junior lacrosse in Burnaby, also played seven seasons for the Burnaby Sr. Lakers.

Dan represented Canada at the 2002 Heritage Cup men’s indoor championships and the 2003 world indoor championships won by Canada as well as playing on the 1998 and 2002 men’s national field lacrosse teams. Stroup has previously been inducted into the halls of fame of the Burnaby Jr. Lakers, the NLL and the Toronto Rock. After hanging up his stick,

Stroup has coached for the Adanacs in the WLA, the NLL’s Washington Stealth and Mammoth and provincial youth field teams.

Joseph Scigliano, a product of Lochdale Elementary and Burnaby North Secondary, started playing with Cliff Avenue United when he was just four years old. It was the birth of a soccer sniper.

He led the Vikings to the AAA provincial high school boys championships in 1992 and 1994. In the last one he scored 10 goals in the tournament.

In his late teens he spent two months trying out for the junior team of the Stoke City Soccer Club of the English First Division. During his stint at Stoke he scored four goals in three games.

Scigliano played for Canada’s under-20 team when it won the CONCACAF zone championship in 1996. The team again played in the world U20 tourney in Malaysia.

Although he also joined Scotland’s Inverness FC for six months, Scigliano ended up staying closer to home joining the Vancouver 86ers playing for its reserve team and once for the senior team. He also helped the Philadelphia Kixx win the Major Indoor Soccer League title in 2001-02.

Patti McGuire swung a hot bat while playing the hot corner. During her residency in Burnaby, the Softball BC Hall of Fame member was on a team that won five Canadian championships.

Prior to that she was on the Canadian team that won a silver medal at the 1978 world tournament in El Salvador as well as the one that came eighth in the 1974 Worlds in Stratford, Conn. McGuire played for legendary coach Adrian Lavigne on a star-studded squad that was known at different times, depending on the club’s sponsor of the day, as Green&Louie, Doc’s Blues and Alpha Sports.

The teams she played on captured 11 Canadian titles. McGuire was named a national all-star five times. Provincially, her teams won 17 titles. During her career in league play, McGuire had a career batting average of .325. She was a run producer ranking first overall in runs batted in, runs scored and doubles while being second in home runs and extra base hits, all the while being a defensive stalwart at third base.

These days, Bruce Gant may be known as much for being the uncle of the best women’s soccer player Canada has ever produced, Christine Sinclair, as his exploits on the pitch. But make no mistake he was pretty darn good. Gant grew up in Burnaby and stayed in the city for his collegiate career going to Simon Fraser University.

He was on the backline for John Buchanan’s Clan when they won the 1976 NAIA men’s soccer title at the famed Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., in the team’s second year of existence. Gant then went on to spend five seasons in the original North American Soccer League. The Portland Timbers selected Gant, who continues to make Burnaby his home, in the first round of the 1979 NASL draft.

He stayed with the Timbers for four seasons until 1982 when it folded. He played one game for the Montreal Manic in 1983. After his NASL stint, Gant helped the Vancouver Firefighters win provincial, Western Canadian and Canadian championship titles. He has also been a part of the Burnaby Girls Soccer Club success coaching teams to national championships and serving as the club’s technical director.