THUNDER BAY -- Jason Myslicki has a hard time believing he is about to be enshrined into a hall of fame.
The 36-year-old former skier only retired four years ago after competing in the 2010 Winter Olympics, now, making him believe his selection to be inducted in the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame might be a little premature.
Nevertheless, it’s an honour he’ll very gladly accept.
“On the one hand you think hall of fame, it sounds like I’m old or something,” he joked at the media reception for the induction ceremony.
“This is extremely exciting for me. It’s a great honour. There are some big names I’m joining in there and that’s a huge privilege.”
Myslicki, along Olympian freestyle skier Amber Peterson, former NHL goaltender John Adams, builders Bill Salonen and John ‘Gino’ Gasparini and the 1996-1997 Thunder Bay Kings AAA midget squad to form the newest class in the region’s highest athletic honour roll, who were all enshrined at the 33rd annual induction ceremony Saturday night at the Valhalla Inn.
Myslicki, who spent the first six years of his life in Upsala, began his athletic career in ski jumping, reaching the world championships in 1995. That achievement was even more special since the event was hosted at his training grounds at Big Thunder.
“I competed at a home world championships at the age of 17 wearing bib No. 1, the first guy to go,” he recalled. “It’s still exciting and gives me goosebumps. That was the start of it all.”
In 1999 he made the transition to Nordic combined, a pursuit he continued all way to 2006, when he became the first Canuck to qualify for the Olympics in the discipline since 1988.
Myslicki briefly hung up his equipment following those Olympics, but the temptation of competing in sport’s highest level in his home country was too much to pass up.
He resumed training and successfully qualified, becoming the only Nordic combined representative from the host country in Vancouver.
Like Myslicki, Peterson made her name on the slopes. The 32-year-old began freestyle skiing in 1993 and within a decade was recognized on the national stage.
She solely devoted her talents to aerials and cracked the World Cup top-10 in 2004, earning a World Cup silver medal the following year. Those efforts earned her a spot at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, where she recorded a 15th place result.
“With the Olympics being every four years there is a lot of pressure built up on it but that’s what it’s all about,” she said. “We train all of our days building up to that moment. It is one day, one event.”
Adams joins a large contingent of hockey players who already have their spot reserved in the hallowed halls of the region’s sports history.
The netminder, who appeared in 22 career NHL games, has his name on the Stanley Cup as a member of the 1970 Boston Bruins squad.
While that was a definite highlight, he still fondly remembers his local success before reaching the big time.
“From my Port Arthur-Fort William days playing junior I had four great years playing locally here on the junior teams and then in the final year we made it all the way to the Memorial Cup, which is a real highlight of my life,” Adams said.
The game has changed substantially for goalies and Adams identified two things he wished were the same back then as they are now.
The first one is the money, the second is the means of self-preservation.
“Your arms and shoulders would be black and blue from the fall to the spring time. It never had a chance to heal,” he said. “The equipment wasn’t that good and they shot pretty hard.”
Salonen played a big role in growing sport throughout the region. In the 1950s he was instrumental in coaching children’s hockey, baseball and football teams.
He received the Hockey Canada Order of Merit in 1993 and the 2002 Golden Jubilee Medal from the federal government, as well as being the name bearer of the Superior International Junior Hockey League’s annual title.
Gasparini was the long-time hockey coach at the University of North Dakota, before becoming the commissioner of the United States Hockey League.
The Kings become the second regional team to claim the midget AAA national title, capping off a 4-1 round robin with a victory over the New Liskeard Cubs in the final of the then-named Air Canada Cup.
