Bellerose Bulldogs Football

Gazette sports editor Jeff Hansen was inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame on Friday during a banquet and ceremony in Red Deer. Hansen was named the Bell Memorial Award winner for 2017 for 25 years of sports coverage in St. Albert. The award recognizes members of the media who have made a significant contribution to amateur sports in Alberta. He was one of 12 individuals and teams added to the hall of fame. Other locals inducted into the hall of fame included Edmonton Oiler Ryan Smyth and 1980s-era NAIT Ooks hockey team who went undefeated in the 1984-85 hockey season. Here is the text of Jeff Hansen’s acceptance speech:

Thank you to the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame for this very special night.

 

And congratulations to this year’s inductees. As athletes and builders, your remarkable contributions to sports in the province have provided a lasting legacy for everybody to cherish and we as fans are the big winners. We have witnessed your achievements with pride and benefitted from your involvement in the sport you love.

As a community reporter, I’m extremely lucky to be one of those fans with a front row seat to a never-ending list of incredible sports moments, while chronicling the feats of athletes young and old.

Painting a picture for the readers of the highlights and heartbreaks of individuals and teams through coverage of local, regional, provincial, national and international events have been the experience of a lifetime.

Everybody has a starting point in their career and my journey began as a summer student at the Wainwright Star Chronicle under Gordon Keith while attending the journalism program at Grant MacEwan College.

And now, I’m completing my 26th season as the sports editor at St. Albert Gazette, or as I proudly refer to as the Connor McDavid of community newspapers in Alberta.

All I ever aspired to do as a journalist was really just to have fun while employed in an occupation that quite frankly didn’t seem like a lot of work.

 

Fast forward to tonight and I’ll be honest: it’s been a wicked adventure that included two tours of duty in Wainwright and memorable stints at the Golden Star and Wetaskiwin Times Advertiser before arriving in St. Albert.

Today, I’m having a blast in a community I’m thrilled to call home while providing information to the readers on a variety of events, topics and athletic endeavours in the St. Albert sports scene.

But never did I expect to be in the spotlight like the athletes I’ve been fortunate to cover.

That’s why I’m truly blessed to be recognized as this year’s Bell Memorial Award recipient.

To even be nominated is so cool. That’s why it’s extremely humbling to be in such distinguished company especially when you’re a community sports reporter. It’s a massive honour.

And I sincerely mean it.

To use a sports cliché, it’s a team game slapping a sports section together twice a week.

The print and online product is arrived through a combination of award-winning visuals by the photographers, a seamless editing process, an eagle-eye proofreader and a production whiz that magically makes the sports pages come to life for the readers.

I’m grateful to the Jamison family for allowing myself to be part of the Gazette’s rich tradition of excellence.

And to rub shoulders with the tireless workers at the Gazette who are committed to their craft has been inspiring.

The passion that pours itself into every Gazette issue is remarkable and overwhelming.

The highest compliment, I believe, in my occupation is not only the respect of your peers but also the individuals who support your contributions to the sports community.

It’s always a huge boost when informed your article was clipped out of the paper and stuck to the fridge or before entering a high school gym you see the stories and pictures of the home team plastered on the wall.

As I stand before you tonight in front of my family, who are my biggest supporters, and my editor, Carolyn, I’m grateful to the individual who nominated me to bring this night to fruition.

Larry Olexiuk has shaped countless lives as a football coach in St. Albert, starting before I joined the Gazette with the bantam Palmer 49ers and the legendary high school Storm and is still going strong with the top high school football program in St. Albert, the Bellerose Bulldogs, under head coach Chad Hill.

Larry has overcome severe health issues to be here tonight and in my mind he is the real Hall of Famer.

Before the announcement of this year’s inductees in late February, I visited Larry in the hospital and during a heart to heart chat he correctly predicted I would be overwhelmed, absolutely floored, by the outpouring of congratulations from not only people I deal with on a weekly basis but those that have touched my life in positive ways.

And that is what makes this night so special. It’s made me appreciate my past while feeling honoured for the present and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Thank you.