This week a St. Albert man made the big leagues.
St. Albert Gazette Sports Editor Jeff Hansen was named to the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame for his exemplary coverage of sports in this community. He is the 2017 winner of the Bell Memorial Award, which is given out to one sports journalist who has made a big contribution to amateur sports in Alberta.
His citation notes that Hansen has raised the profile of and instilled confidence in many St. Albert athletes.
Hansen joins the ranks of top media heavy hitters like Ron MacLean (1996) and Terry Jones (2002), who are among the recipients of the Bell Memorial Award. He will take his place in the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame alongside some of the athletes or teams whose achievements he has written about.
Hansen’s contributions to St. Albert sports coverage are considerable. For 25 years he’s been a one-man sports section for the Gazette, covering local athletes from high school to Olympic levels.
The award comes with a ring, a spot in the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame, and the opportunity to be celebrated with well-known sports icons like former Oilers star Ryan Smyth, who will also be among the 12 people and teams inducted into the hall of fame this year.
“Jeff’s been amazing to St. Albert sports,” says Olympic gold medallist curler and St. Albert resident Marc Kennedy, who Hansen has tracked since his early days.
Having Hansen at your game is huge for a young athlete, Kennedy says.
“Just seeing him makes you feel like your event is important.”
Three-time Paralympic gold medallist and former St. Albert resident Jennifer Krempien says Hansen has covered her entire 20-year career in wheelchair basketball, and has done much to raise the profile of the sport.
“He really captured it as a sport,” she says, and focused on the blood, sweat and tears shed on the court rather than the disabilities involved – an approach that was revolutionary at the time.
Yet it is the local sports, high school sports in particular, that Hansen is most passionate about.
“Those are the grassroots sports everyone in the community can relate to,” he said this week.
Hansen considers it the ultimate compliment when parents or athletes post his stories to their fridge.
Hansen will be inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame in Red Deer in a formal banquet in May.
Local sports matter and Hansen has done credit to the amateur and professional athletes who hail from St. Albert. And he’s not done yet. He continues to celebrate local efforts and achievements in the sports sections he produces twice a week for the Gazette.
In more than two decades in St. Albert, Hansen has cemented himself as a pillar of the local sports community. And now his contributions to St. Albert will be forever etched alongside others who have left a lasting sports legacy, in the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame.
