Abram Robiso
Sport – Weight lifting
School – Burnaby Mountain

Lauren Gaffney-Gomez
Sport – Softball
School – Burnaby Mountain

When not wielding a wrench at Charles Lavigne’s Engine Rebuilders on Kingsway – near his family home on 19th Avenue – the late Adrian Lavigne was the brains behind a women’s softball powerhouse known at various times as Green & Louie, Doc’s Blues and Alpha Sports.

Starting in 1969 until 1993, Lavigne’s teams won a staggering 19 provincial and 11 national titles. It was also a top team in the Northwest League which included teams from the United States Pacific Northwest. His teams played in many international tournaments and represented Canada at two world championships finishing seventh in 1974 in Stanford, Conn., and second at El Salvador in 1978.

Twelve of his players have been inducted into the B.C. Softball Hall of Fame and into the Canadian Softball Hall of Fame. Following their playing days, 13 became coaches and, like Lavigne, none have been thrown out of a game by an umpire.

When Simon Fraser University decided to form a women’s soccer program in 1988 the school pegged Shelley Howieson as its head coach. She didn’t leave until 2013 after creating a collegiate powerhouse in her 25 years in charge of the program.

Her Clan soccer squads won NAIA national titles in 1996 and 2000, had three consecutive trips to the national finals (1996-98) and went to the NAIA championship tournaments 10 times in a 13-year span (1997-2010).

Howieson was named NAIA coach of the year twice, as well as coach of the year by Sport BC and BC Soccer. In 2010, she was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame.

The team became provincial champions by defeating Fraser Valley 3-1 in the cup final. That victory earned them the right to represent British Columbia at the 1987 national championships in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Cliff Avenue defeated the host province and Nova Scotia en route to the final against a squad from Scarborough, Ontario.

In the final, Cliff Avenue overcame a 1-0 halftime deficit to win the Canadian U16 championship 2-1 in overtime. The hero was Maurizio Catania who scored a minute into the second OT period.

When Wayne Van Dorp joined the Burnaby Minor Hockey Association at a young age nobody envisioned he’d go on to an extensive professional career that included 125 regular season and 27 playoff games with four NHL teams. Van Dorp was rarely selected to play rep hockey, but once he grew into his six-foot-four, 225-pound frame he became enticing to junior scouts.

He went from playing Midget B to the B.C. Junior A Hockey League’s Bellingham Blazers to the Seattle Breakers of the Western Hockey League. After stints in Europe and several seasons in the minor leagues, he was signed by the Buffalo Sabres, who traded him to Edmonton in March 1987. The Oilers liked Van Dorp’s 192 penalty minutes in 47 games playing for Buffalo’s farm team, the Rochester Americans.

Those Oilers, of course, went on to win their third Stanley Cup earning Van Dorp the sport’s most prized possession, a Cup ring. In his NHL career, the left winger scored 12 goals and 12 assists to go along with his 565 penalty minutes.

He also played for Netherlands at the 1986 World Ice Hockey B Championships.

While growing up in South Burnaby, Bryan Miki was schooled in the art of curling by his father Fuji, who had won provincial and Canadian championships. Bryan’s superb shooting and sweeping skills landed him a spot as the second for skip Greg McAulay.

That team won a provincial title in 1998 and went on to represent B.C. at the Brier, the Canadian men’s curling championship, in Winnipeg. The foursome finished tied for fourth with a 7-4 round-robin record before losing a tiebreaker to Saskatchewan.

They were back at the 2000 Brier, this time in Saskatoon. This time, though, they finished first in the round robin (9-2) and defeated legendary skip Russ Howard of New Brunswick in the final 9-5 with Miki curling 98 per cent. A few weeks later at the world championship in Glasgow, Scotland, they again won the round robin (8-1) and downed Sweden’s Peja Lindholm 9-4 in the final making Miki a world champion.

Since the end of his competitive playing days, Miki has turned to coaching junior and elite young men’s teams.

Ruky Abdulai grew up in Western Africa but wanted to compete for Canada. The teenager was a track and field star – in more ways than one – in Ghana but wanted to live somewhere peaceful like Canada. Her spectacular results in long jump, high jump, triple jump, hurdles and relays earned her offers from big schools in the United States.

Then one day an email arrived from Simon Fraser University coach Brit Townsend and Abdulai immediately became determined to not only go to the school on Burnaby Mountain, but to also become a Canadian citizen and represent her new homeland at the Olympics.

She accomplished all three by claiming 17 NAIA titles – which is a NAIA record – for SFU, by getting her citizenship and by competing in the high jump at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing coming in 25th. 

After gaining citizenship, Abdulai set a Canadian long jump record with a leap of 6.72 metres. She also competed in the heptathlon at the 2011 world championships and many other international events.

John Stockdale grew up in North Burnaby playing soccer and swimming but made his mark playing for SFU’s water polo club team as well as coaching it until 1981.

In addition to 11 national titles as a coach, he became BC Water Polo’s executive director in 1986-87, co-authored technical manuals, was a course conductor and coordinator, and developed a high performance camp for women athletes in 2010 that he still runs from which more than 40 athletes have secured NCAA scholarships.

He’s also been a big part of the Burnaby Barracudas water polo program for decades dating back to the days when the club was based at Deer Lake instead of the Central Park Pool. Considered by many as “The Godfather of B.C. Water Polo,” Stockdale has twice been named Water Polo Canada’s volunteer of the year and is a two-time winner of the Sport BC President’s Award.

Valentine James Roche was a Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame inductee who was considered the father of lacrosse in North Burnaby. After the Second World War, the British born editor of the Burnaby Advertiser newspaper found sponsors, coaches and managers for the sport. But his contributions weren’t limited to lacrosse.

Roche was also a life member of the B.C. Junior and Juvenile Soccer Association, which he helped found. For more than 30 years, he either coached or managed teams. In addition, Roche was instrumental in forming and administering the Silver, Bronze and Emerald Glove junior boxing tournaments.

Roche made such an impact, renowned Vancouver Sun columnist Dick Beddoes, even though he was in Seattle to interview legendary baseball manager Leo Durocher at the time, wrote a column about Roche after his death in 1958 calling Roche “a major leaguer in minor athletics.”