The first set of Kingston/ Greenwood Sports Hall of Fame honorees are set for a Fall induction.
Volunteers with the new initiative have selected two athletes, a coach/ umpire and two teams from a number of potential recipients contributed in the first call for nominations from the “765” telephone exchange, common to the neighbouring communities and surrounds.
Athletes Barbara McKeil, Gerry MacMillan and Ken Wregget; coach/ umpire Ernie Hatfield and both the 1977-79 Greenwood girls Bantam softball team and the 1976-79 Greenwood Bantam A Bombers hockey team were chosen April 10. Preliminary nominations and biography information is in hand, but there is lots more to add before the public ceremony, scheduled to take place at the Kingston fire hall October 25.
MacMillan, one of the best golfers to ever tee off in Nova Scotia, is already a member of the Nova Scotia, Middleton and Dalhousie University sports halls of fame. Growing up in Wilmot, he is an institution at the Paragon Golf and Country Club in Kingston. MacMillan won both a provincial juvenile and junior championship, four provincial mid-amateur championships, three amateur championships and was named Nova Scotia golfer of the year four times. He was named to 11 provincial Willingdon Cup teams, and has represented Nova Scotia in 19 Willingdon Cup events; he has also been a member of nine provincial mid-amateur teams. In 1999, the first Nova Scotia Golf Association team was the first to win the Canadian championship.
Born in Brandon, Manitoba, in 1964, Wregget spent his formative years in Greenwood, playing up to and including Bantam level hockey in the Greenwood Minor Hockey association. He helped lead his Bantam team to back-to-back Nova Scotia Major Bantam Championships in 1977 and 1978, as well as the 1978 Maritime Bantam Championship. He played major junior with the Lethbridge Hurricanes of the WHL and was selected as the top league goaltender in 1984, and the starting goaltender for Team Canada in the 1984 World Junior Championships. In 1982, he was drafted 45th overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs. After spending six years with the Leafs, he was traded to Philadelphia and then on to Pittsburgh. In 1992, he won a Stanley Cup with the Penguins. After spending 17 years in the NHL, Wregget now lives in the Pittsburgh area.
Born in Spryfield in 1935, McKeil spent the majority of her life in the Kingston/ Greenwood area and had a varied athletic career. She was selected for the Nova Scotia softball team in 1956, won numerous curling bonspiels, was a member of the 1971 Maritime bowling team and was even successful on the stock car track. It is golf, however, where she really made her mark: she qualified for the N.S. ladies amateur team three times, the N.S. senior ladies team nine times, was a two-time N.S. senior ladies champion and twice won the N.S. Mother/ Daughter Championship. McKeil passed away in 2022 at 86.
Hatfield started umpiring in 1958 and called his last out in 2020, when he officiated three games of baseball for the commercial league in Yarmouth. He umpired nationals, provincials and zones in three provinces. For 10 years, he was umpire-in-chief for the Valley, working from Windsor to Digby.
The Greenwood girls Bantam (U15) softball team won back-to-back Nova Scotia Bantam championships, in 1977 and 1978. Comprised of girls from mainly Dwight Ross Junior High and West Kings High School, the girls also won the inaugural 1079 Eastern Canadian Bantam Girls Championship. Over a two-and-a-half-year period, they compiled a 32-0 record.
From 1976 to 1979, the Greenwood Bantam A Bombers Hockey Team captured three straight Nova Scotia Bantam A (equivalent to Major Bantam now) championships. They also won back-to-back Maritime Bantam A Championships in 1978 and 1979, and numerous invitational tournaments.
