Dario Ciccone
Sport – Football
School – St. Thomas More

Sofia Napolitano
Sport – Water Polo
School – St. Thomas More

Dan Mattinson, a Willingdon Heights product, was coaching soccer for Norburn Athletic Club when legendary lacrosse builder Jack Crosby (inducted into the Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame’s first class in 2001), lured him to the lacrosse box. It didn’t take long before Mattinson was hooked. He loved the speed and physicality of the sport.

The game inspired Mattinson to devour not only all he could learn about lacrosse, but also about coaching. He eagerly ate up any information available on the art and science of the craft earning several levels of national coaching certification. He learned from many innovators including Simon Fraser University men’s basketball coach Jon Kootnekoff, Soviet hockey czar Anatoli Tarasov, Canadian sports fitness guru Lloyd Percival and track and field commentating icon Geoffrey Gowan.

It paid off initially with success for a midget team he coached and for B.C.’s team at the 1973 Canada Summer Games held in Burnaby and New Westminster. His biggest successes, though, came in leading Burnaby Cablevision to six Minto Cups, including winning three years in a row — 1977, 1978 and 1979 — unprecedented for western Canadian teams. In 12 regular seasons (1974-1985) being the Burnaby bench boss Mattinson’s squads racked up 223 wins and just 75 losses and three ties.

After upsetting five-time British Columbia champion UBC Alumni 2-0 in the provincial final, the Burnaby Canadians Anduccis went on to win the 2001 Canadian senior women’s soccer championship with an ending worthy of a Hollywood script. During group play at the national tournament in Vaughn, Ontario the Canadians defeated Saskatchewan 4-0, Newfoundland 3-0 and Quebec 2-0 while tying Ontario 1-1.

That earned them a berth in the final against Nova Scotia, which had not surrendered a goal in winning all four of its games in the other group. In the final, no goals were scored in regulation, or in 30 minutes of overtime. So it was off to a penalty-kick shootout, which turned into a real nail-biter. After each team scored twice in the usual five-shot shootout, the teams exchanged goals and misses in each successive round to where it was 5-5 after 10 rounds.

That left only the goaltenders eligible to shoot. Burnaby goalie Michele Gademans scored on her shot. She then went back in net and saved the shot by the Nova Scotian keeper to secure a national title for Burnaby.

Back: Manager: Mike Everett, Head Coach: Danny Pietramala, Michelle Gademans, Kathryn Manson, Kristine Jack, Kelly Donaldson, Teresa Latham, Phebe Trotman, Leah Stipic, Janine Duprey, Leanna Byrom, Nadia Salvino, Sian Bagshawe, assistant coaches: Chris Johnson and Scott Fletcher.
Front: Catriona Scheffer, Taryn Cervi, Aimee Dunn, Tanya Genovese, Andrea Poole, Lynsey Burkinshaw, Gillian Hicks, Laura Favaro, Leigh Collins, Veronica Lie, Lisa McLeod, trainer: Jonathan Figueroa.
Missing: Sheryl Pietramala, Rosalyn Hicks

As a kid, basketball was Howard Hum’s sport, but one day when he was in Grade 10 a volleyball coach at Alpha secondary in North Burnaby asked him to referee even though he “knew absolutely nothing about the sport.” Hum took on the challenge and got certified.

He’s been blowing a whistle ever since. For 36 years, Hum, who remains a Burnaby resident, has been a constant presence patrolling the volleyball net and sidelines as he officiates at high-level university and collegiate matches. In addition,

Hum has organized officials for many international competitions, served on the board of Volleyball BC (2012-2014) and has been an executive board member for Volleyball Canada since 2014. In those roles he worked toward increasing the professionalism, quality standards and compensation for volleyball officials.

Hum believes one of the keys to his success was accepting the fact he was never going to be 100 per cent right and once he put himself in the shoes of the coaches and players he was officiating and understood their emotions it made him a better official.

Fred Usselman, an East Burnaby boy, was a long, lanky sniper who was lethal playing on one of the era’s most prolific lines. The six-foot-four Usselman played alongside two other Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame inductees, Gord Gimple and Alex Carey, starting from their early days in minor lacrosse in Burnaby.

The trio led the Vancouver PNE Indians (1954) and Mount Pleasant Legion (1956) to Minto Cup national junior championships and then followed it up with Vancouver Burrards/Carlings to capture the 1961, 1963 and 1964 Mann Cup Canadian senior men’s titles. A five-time Western Lacrosse Association all-star, Usselman scored 476 goals and 773 points in his 12-year career.

He was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1979 and those Mann Cup championship teams have also been inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame. After winning the 1961 WLA scoring title, Usselman told the league it should have a trophy for the scoring leader. The league agreed and created the Denny Huddleston Trophy in 1962, although it turned out to be too late for his name to be engraved on it.

Kevin Reynolds’ amazing athleticism helped to influence changes to figure skating judging. Based out of the elite skating program at Burnaby 8-Rinks and Reynolds represented Canada at six world championships, finishing has high was fifth, as well as the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Reynolds trained under the tutelage of another Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame inductee Joanne McLeod (2005). He was the first skater to land two quadruple jumps in a single program and five quads in one competition. But in his early days of competing he wasn’t getting rewarded by the judges for executing difficult and eye-popping elements. That didn’t deter him, though.

Instead it motivated him to continue to challenge the system by performing his array of difficult elements in the hope change would come, and it did. Since then the judging criteria has completely flipped, says Reynolds, and he is “very proud” of being part of that change.

Late in his career, Reynolds persevered on the ice despite a hip injury and a torn labrum. That’s usually a career-ending injury in figure skating, but Reynolds rebounded with rehabilitation to skate for another four years.

Chris Joseph grew up in North Burnaby and played much of his minor hockey for the Burnaby Winter Club. After two seasons of major junior with the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League, Joseph went on to play 510 games for seven teams in the National Hockey League during his 19-year professional career which took him to all corners of the North American continent as well as a couple of stops in Europe.

Joseph was a first-round draft pick, fifth overall, of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1987. During his NHL career he scored 39 goals and 112 assists for 151 points. He had two stints with the Penguins and also patrolled the blueline for the Edmonton Oilers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Philadelphia Flyers, Phoenix Coyotes and Atlanta Thrashers.

He played 38 games for the Vancouver Canucks in 1999-2000 scoring two goals and nine assists. He also helped Canada win a gold medal at the 1988 world junior hockey championship in Moscow, and was a member of the Canadian team that played in the 1987 tournament in Piestany, Czechoslovakia.

Joseph became an Edmonton firefighter and established a hockey academy in St. Albert, AB.

Steven Mawhinney has been a gym rat ever since he first started playing basketball in the 1970s at Marlborough elementary in South Burnaby. Although his talent didn’t match his passion for the game, he began refereeing games across the street when he was at Royal Oak Junior High and then at Burnaby Central Senior High where he was encouraged by a teacher, Mr. Abercrombie, to join the local officials association.

Many decades later, he can still be found most nights or weekend sporting the zebra stripes with a whistle between his lips as he goes up and down the hardwood. Mawhinney has refereed four B.C. high school senior boys championship finals and two girls provincial finals. He has been recognized as the winner of the Wink Willox Award for service, commitment and excellence in officiating by both Basketball BC and the Canadian Association of Basketball Officials.

There are some who believe the Greater Vancouver Basketball Officials Association may not have survived the last 20 years without Mawhinney’s contributions.