Fredericton celebrates Sports Wall of Fame Class of 2024

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The Class of 2024 for Fredericton’s Sports Wall of Fame was formally inducted during a ceremony saluting athletes, teams, coaches and builders Saturday at the Delta Marriott Hotel.

Approximately 25 members of the Fredericton Royals baseball teams were on hand to celebrate their record setting accomplishments from 2006-10.

In addition, former Daily Gleaner sports journalists Bruce Hallihan and Bill Hunt were inducted for their 40 years of extensive coverage of all sports in the Greater Fredericton area, rugby coach Bob Cockburn of the University of New Brunswick took his place after a lifetime of work in his sport, more notably at the university level, and multi-sport athlete Carol Mullholland was inducted for her many athletic accomplishments as well as her elite coaching and sports administration success.

From 2006-10, the Royals produced an amazing run of success on the diamond with five straight New Brunswick titles with a lineup made up almost entirely of Fredericton-born players.

During that span, they recorded a regular season mark of 97-50 and then went 42-9 in the playoff seasons over the same period.

In all, their record during regular season, playoff and nationals in that span was 151-70, a slate that included a pair of Canadian bronze medal performances.

Players on the team included Jody Peterson, Dave Barr, Josh Collins, Jon Pineo, Jeremy Turgeon, Phil Merrill, Dan Murphy, John Bums, Jake Waugh, Greg Hallihan, Bobby Woods, Stephie McCarty, Peter Shaw, Cory Stairs, Chris Sorensen, Brooks Saunders, Andrew Estey, Matt Wood, Dan Reid, Mike Ivey, Mike Washburn, Kirk Cornell, Matt Stewart, Corey Ryan, Greg Hallett, Jay Magee and Andrew MacNeil.

The coaches were Mark Sibley, Jamie Estey, Jody Peterson, Mike Lint, Steven Hicks and executives were Kevin Agar, Kristian Dewar, Tim Hawkins.

Cockburn was credited with reviving rugby at the University of New Brunswick, which was a sport from 1891 to 1951 on their annual calendars but not from 1951-1968.

In a span of 31 years, teams that he developed and coached won 22 Maritime University championships, three Eastern Canadian University championships and seven McNair Cups as New Brunswick Rugby Unit champions.

Combined, more than 1,000 players suited up for UNB teams under Cockburn, producing a record of 273 wins, 135 losses and 14 ties during his coaching span. In 2013, he was recognized by Rugby Canada for his contributions to the game and he also helped to create the Ironman Gazette magazine, published twice a year from 1982 to 2018. He was inducted into the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in 2013.

Mulholland excelled as an athlete in both swimming and racquetball before becoming a successful coach, administrator, educator, trainer and mentor in the province.

She represented New Brunswick at the first Canada Games in 1969 as a swimmer and also swam for the University of New Brunswick in the early 1970s.

Her racquetball success included triumphs at the provincial, national, international levels, which included the 1994 Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Games in England and gold and silver medal wins at the World Racquetball Championships in Mexico.

She coached New Brunswick at the Canada Games for racquetball in 1983 and in 1991, where her athletes produced medal winning efforts.

Mulholland served on the coaching staff for the national racquetball team and was recognized as New Brunswick’s female coach of the year on several occasions. She was the executive director of both the New Brunswick Racquetball Association and Athletics New Brunswick from 1990 to 1999. And since 2000, she has focused on high performance training with athletes and teams in a number of sports.

For more than 40 years, Hallihan and Hunt chronicled the sports scene in the Greater Fredericton area for the Daily Gleaner, including 34 years together in the same newsroom.

In that span, Hallihan was a two-time Atlantic Journalism Award recipient, winning gold in 2015 and silver in 2016, won the Sport New Brunswick award for outstanding media coverage in 2022 and in 2020, became only the sixth Atlantic Canadian journalist to win the Fred Sgambati Award for outstanding coverage of university sport, a national award first presented in 1972.

Hunt won the American Hockey League James H. Ellery Award for outstanding media coverage in 1991, for his coverage of the Fredericton Canadiens. He also covered the Fredericton Express prior to that.

In 2018, he led a grassroots campaign that resulted in Willie O’Ree of Fredericton being inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He was also elected to the Atlantic Journalism Hall of Fame in 2019, cited for outstanding dedication and achievement in journalism in Atlantic Canada.

Additionally, Vince Sturgeon was named the winner of the William (Bill) MacGillivray Award as the Volunteer of the Year for 2003-24.

He started coaching minor football in 2003 and during his extensive involvement in the sport, he’s taken the Northside Junior Lions under 16 team to six provincial titles in his eight years of involvement with the team. He joined the coaching staff at the Leo Hayes Lions in 2010 and the Maritime Football League’s Fredericton Gladiators in 2011 and the UNB Red Bombers in 2015.

He became the head coach of the New Brunswick Under 16 program in 2014 and held that role into 2021. There he coached in three Eastern Canadian championships and was part of the only New Brunswick team to beat Ontario, that occurring in 2018. He served with the provincial Under 18 team for three years, a side that defeated British Columbia at the 2023 Canada Cup.

And he’s also been a part of the coaching staff for the Under 16 Team Canada squad that competed at the 2018 International Bowl in Dallas, TX.

He is currently the head coach of the Leo Hayes Varsity Lions, a position he’s held since 2017, and has been the head coach of the UNB Reds football program since 2019, where he’s won two championships.

Fredericton athletes Max Grant and Josh Lawrence were recognized as The Myer and Jack Budovitch Trophy winners as the city’s athletes of the year for 2022 and 2023 respectively.

Grant, a baseball star for the NCAA Division 1 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion Canisius Golden Griffins of Buffalo, N.Y., posted a .398 average with 90 hits including 10 home runs in a 54-game schedule in 2022.

For his efforts, he was named the MAAC player of the year and was voted as a second-team all-American by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association.

Lawrence, a Memorial Cup champion with the Saint John Sea Dogs in 2022, followed that with an electric season in 2022-23 in the QMJHL with the Halifax Mooseheads in 2023.

He finished the season with 50 goals and 69 assists for 119 points in 69 games to finish second overall in league scoring.

In the post-season, he added 12 goals and 19 assists in 21 games and was named a second team all-star for the entire Canadian Hockey League, which includes the QMJHL, the Ontario Hockey League and the Western Hockey League.