Gary Reed and Jessica Vliegenthart, along with Doug Collins, are part of the 2023 Kamloops Sports Hall of Fame class (Image Credit: Canadian Olympic Committee / Contributed)

By Chad Klassen

KAMLOOPS SPORTS HALL OF FAME

Kamloops Sports Hall of Fame inductees credit community for their sporting successes

Mar 8, 2023 | 4:17 PM

KAMLOOPS — It was the 2007 World Track and Field Championships and Gary Reed was in lane three after advancing to the 800-metre final.

Reed got out to the early lead and kept that pace for most of the race — until the end when his competitor Alfred Yego from Kenya narrowly edged him out for gold. Reed had to settle for a silver.

“It’s a pretty vivid memory in my mind still, coming down the home stretch after many major championships at that point,” remembered Reed. “Just feeling Yego on my shoulder in the last two metres of that race — one-one hundreth of a second. You can’t even blink that fast. I’m still very proud of the accomplishment. Obviously to be second in the world is never anything you want to be disappointed about.”

Reed also went to two Olympic Games, finishing fourth in Beijing. After retiring, he got involved in the Kamloops Track and Field Club.

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For all his athletic accomplishments on the track, Reed is heading to the Kamloops Sports Hall of Fame.

“I’m really honoured. I joined the track club when I was 13 years old, so many years of track and field in the city. It’s where it all started for me really,” said Reed. “It was emotional when I got the call. Just started bringing back a lot of memories. I feel really good about it.”

Joining Reed is Jessica Vliegenthart, who was a year behind Gary at Kam High. She was always involved in sports in high school before being involved in an accident just shy of her 21st birthday that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

However, Vliegenthart took that sporting spirit and worked her way up to the national wheelchair basketball team, winning silver at the 2007 Pan Am Games, bronze at the 2010 World Championship, silver at the 2011 Pan Am Games and taking part at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.

“I do totally credit my upbringing in Kamloops and all the coaches I had as a kid in Kamloops with a ton of my success at the international level,” said Vliegenthart, who’s a lawyer at Fulton & Company. “We have such a dedicated sport community here.”

Vliegenthart was inspired by a fellow Kamloops Sports Hall of Famer, wheelchair racer Kelly Smith.

“I’m super excited to join him. When I started getting involved in wheelchair sports, Kelly was so cool. I thought he was so amazing,” she said. “I used to wheelchair race a little bit and I just thought he was so powerful. I really wanted to be kind of like him.”

Vliegenthart hopes through her success, she can inspire other paraplegic athletes who want to live out their sporting dream.

The third inductee is a man familiar to us here at CFJC Today — Doug Collins, who in addition to his role as news director at the station had a passion for sport.

Many would remember him from his involved in hockey as a play-by-play man for the Kamloops Chiefs, baseball as a coach and President of Kamloops Minor Baseball, football as a high school coach, and amateur rodeo as an announcer.

The three will officially be inducted at a April 29 ceremony.