St. Albert’s most distinguished and decorated female athlete will be inducted into the Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame on May 10.
Wheelchair basketball player Jennifer (Goose) Krempien is among six individuals selected by the Canadian Paralympic Committee for hall of fame honours.
“I’m humbled that as an individual athlete in the context of a team sport I’m being recognized,” Krempien said Monday. “I still appreciate and value the actual athlete highlights related to the sport accomplishments but this is certainly a nice acknowledgement of the career.”
Initiated in 2000, the Canadian Paralympic Hall of Famer recognizes and celebrates those who have made a significant contribution to the growth and development as role models to the Paralympic movement in Canada.
“I’m a little bit in awe of what it means still,” said Krempien, who suffered a spinal cord injury at the age of five. “I haven’t quite figured out how to put it in words for me and how to put it in that neat little package that I like, but it’s amazing to me that with the success of our men’s and women’s basketball programs that I’m actually the first wheelchair basketball athlete to be inducted.”
Krempien, 38, was a mainstay of the powerhouse Canadian women’s team from her 1992 Paralympic Games' debut at age 17 to her retirement in 2008 wearing No. 4.
Her illustrious career was highlighted by three-straight gold medals during five Paralympic Games' appearances and four Gold Cup world championships. She was a tournament all-star at the 1998 and 2002 worlds.
The former Robert Rundle and W.D. Cuts student and Paul Kane High School alumna was Canada’s flag bearer at the opening ceremonies of the 2007 Parapan American Games and in 2008 was named the Canadian Wheelchair Basketball Association’s female athlete of the year.
She also excelled in the Canadian Wheelchair Basketball League and Canadian Wheelchair Basketball Championships in leading her teams to 10 gold medals.
On Jan. 25 at the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame, Krempien was presented with a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, honouring significant contributions and achievements by Canadians. The medals were presented to Canadian Olympic and Paralympic athletes at the London 2012 Games and to individuals who helped grow the Paralympic movement in Canada.
“It’s always nice to be recognized but I find it tough as a team sport when individuals are recognized because that’s not how the sport is and that’s not how we have success. It’s a team effort,” said Krempien, who was inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
Also going into the Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame with Krempien is Robert Easton of Edmonton in athletics, Tim McIsaac of Winnipeg in swimming, coach Tim Frick of Pender Island, B.C. and builders Janet Dunn of Victoria and John Howe of Brantford, Ont.
They will be acknowledged within the Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame honoured members section, located in the Olympic and Paralympic Gallery at Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in Calgary.
“The amazing accomplishments of this group of six inductees have together broken records, made history, changed attitudes and created opportunities in parasport,” said David Legg, president of the Canadian Paralympic Committee.
Krempien is thrilled to see Frick, her former national team head coach during an unprecedented three consecutive Paralympic gold medals (1992, 1996 and 2000) and four world titles (1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006), receive hall of fame honours.
“To have the chance to celebrate this moment with him will be the most unique and endearing part of it.”
Frick described Krempien as the heart and soul of the No. 1 Paralympic female basketball team in the world during Canada’s run of greatness on the court.
“Every single time she goes on the court – whether it’s for a practice, a game or a demonstration – she comes with focus and intensity that is just unbelievable. She just doesn’t have a bad day. It’s that dogged determination she has,” Frick told the Gazette in a 2008 interview.
“She was kind of shy and quiet and reserved (when Krempien burst onto the international scene at the 1992 Paralympics), yet brought that focus and intensity and physical drive right from day one,” Frick added. “What pleasantly surprised us over the years was how she has taken over the natural leadership of the team. She is not someone that was voted in through Miss Congeniality. She is a natural leader. People gravitate towards her. She naturally takes on those leadership tasks and obviously no amount of leadership training weekend courses can do that sort of stuff. It’s just something that is inside her.”
Krempien’s swan song was the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, as Canada finished fifth overall.
“It is my opinion that she was our best player in Beijing, averaging 35 minutes a game (out of a maximum of 40), the highest on the team,” Frick said of Canada’s co-captain from 2004 to 2008.
Looking back, Krempien has no regrets calling it a career when she did.
“Not at all. I couldn’t have planned that process better,” said the founding member of the Inferno Wheelchair Basketball Society in Edmonton. “After the last game, when we played China, I was sitting in the locker room and I took off my jersey and I dropped it into the team laundry bag and there was no sentimental value attached to it. It was like, ‘Yup. That’s done. Great. Let’s move on.’ I didn’t cry and I don’t really remember sadness with it. It was excitement for what was coming and what was left to accomplish.”
Krempien currently lives in Richmond and works at the B.C. Children’s and Women’s Hospital in Vancouver, where she recently accepted a new position as the professional practice leader for nutrition.
“I support the clinical dietitians in their clinical role so I’m their manager or leader I guess,” she said. “It’s more how nutrition can be used as a therapeutic support or a treatment option. Part of it is the oral diet, but a lot of it is if we have to use a feeding tube or feed through IV.”
Krempien’s dedication to the Paralympic movement included a master of science research at the University of British Columbia that investigated the dietary adequacy of elite Canadian athletes with a spinal cord injury.
The dietitian for host medical services at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games performs the same role with the Canadian wheelchair curling and wheelchair rugby teams, along with Paralympic athletes in other sports.
“There is still a lot I want to accomplish and achieve,” she said. “It’s the same process that I used as an athlete and I’m translating those skills now, setting little goals and dreaming and achieving.”
Krempien summed up her career with a quote by Aristotle.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
