Many a Sudbury Sports Hall of Famer has been required to leave the nickel city in pursuit of their athletic dreams, often times settling down and tackling the next stage of their lives miles and miles and miles from the place they call home.
Such, however, is not the Class of 2024.
By nothing more than sheer coincidence, the five individuals who will be enshrined next month are one and all vibrant, active parts of the Sudbury community to this day – a fact for which all of those who have a love of local sports are thankful.
Dave St Amour: An undersized receiver / running back / return specialist who was first introduced to football in his freshman year at Nickel District Secondary School, St Amour would go on to suit up in 22 different NFC seasons for the Sudbury Spartans. The accolades and statistical resume would leave little doubt that the 5’5” dynamo would could elude contact like few others would ultimately made his way to the NFC Hall of Fame (2003).
"It's pretty tough to teach that instinct to move and avoid or sense when someone is coming up,” noted St Amour in an interview some four years ago. “You can work on tackle drills and evasive drills, to some extent, but I think that it's mostly innate. I think some of it really comes down to if you were good, when you're really young, at playing tag."
With 2014 Sudbury Sports Hall of Fame quarterback Paul Gauthier on the delivering end of a large majority on these passes, St Amour established league records for career receptions (314), receiving yards (5139) and touchdown receptions (61).
"It was incredible the trust that Paul had in me to put the ball into situations where it might not have been the best choice, but knowing I was going to go get the ball and make the catch anyways," noted the two time league MVP who remains active these days as an elite Cross Fit competitor.
Bob Chaperon: It was at the very onset of his teenage years that Chaperon would take to the tables of the Nickel City Billiards (on Elm Street), racking the balls with the knowledge of the payoff that would ensue once his work was done.
"I used to put in four, five, six, seven hours on the table by myself," said the man who claimed the Canadian Snooker Championship in 1981. "It's not like work, it's the pleasure of working on your game. It's repetition and mechanics. The more you practice, the better you get, and the luckier you get, it seems."
But it was far more skill than luck that would lead the northern Ontario gentleman to pursue his craft as a professional, overseas, specifically in those hallowed grounds where the game’s greats would shine year after year. In 1990, Chaperon became the first and only Canadian ever to lay claim to the British Open crown, stringing together a run for the ages that few would see coming.
"I had just gotten a new cue and had practiced my butt off," Chaperon reminisced, returning to the sport in 2007 and earning a berth at the 2020 World Senior Championships. "I had told the kid in the pool hall that I was going to make a 147 (perfect game) with the new cue - I had never made one - and I said I was going to win a major event."
Troy Mallette: Drafted first overall by the Soo Greyhounds in the 1986 OHL draft, Levack native Troy Mallette knew little of the world in which he was about to immerse himself. His comfort zone had always been to simply go out and play a game that he loved, a game that he was quite skilled at.
In 191 OHL games with a team that never hit the .500 mark at season’s end, Mallette would rack up 169 points – and 513 penalty minutes, a testament to the mix of skill and physicality that marked his game at the time. It was enough to see the local product selected in the second round of the 1988 NHL draft, 22nd overall, by the New York Rangers.
“As training camp kept going, I'm reading the New York Times, reading all the papers, and they're saying that the Rangers need a physical left winger - and I'm an offensive centerman," stated the avid outdoorsman, who would call it a career, after 451 NHL games, following a neck/back injury in the late 1990s.
"I knew I was a good enough player to do what they needed. I played a physical left wing role and earned a spot in the opening night roster. I had played one more NHL game than I ever thought I would. The second game, I didn't dress, figured I was going back, but then was back in the lineup for the third game and never missed a game for the remainder of the year."
Louise Sheridan: There are two names that dominate the women’s golf plaques at the Idylwylde Golf & Country Club: Phyllis Crang (Sudbury Sports Hall of Fame – Class of 1981) and Louise Sheridan. Amazingly, the latter, a native of Pembroke who moved to Sudbury to attend Laurentian University, did not pick up the sport of golf until her thirties.
That said, Sheridan had very good reason to believe that she would become adept, at the very least, given her background as an alumni of the L.U. women’s field hockey team. “I figured if I could hit a ball travelling at one hundred miles an hour, I could hit a ball that was standing still,” she laughed.
A grandmother now to three grandchildren, Sheridan still finds herself in the mix with the top women in town, crowned as both Women’s Invitational and Ladies Club champion last summer. “I am competitive, by nature, with myself – at least for the moment – but I’m not going to ruin anybody’s game trying to be competitive,” she said. “I’m not trying to make a living at golf.”
Dale Beausoleil: A man who is pretty much synonymous with the sport of volleyball in Sudbury, Dale Beausoleil has enjoyed success at every stop along the way of more than four decades coaching the sport. Well tenured with the Cambrian women’s team, the graduate of Confederation Secondary has hit the OCAA podium on 11 occasions with the squad, earning a bronze medal at nationals with the 2005 team.
More recently, he has led the Lasalle Lancers boys to OFSAA gold on two occasions as well as guiding the Cambrian men to back to back OCAA bronze medal performances after taking over a team that had not won more than four games in any single year in the decade preceding his arrival.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had the thought where I wanted to stop coaching,” suggested Beausoleil in April of 2022, the year in which he accomplished the unprecedented feat of being named OCAA Coach of the Year for both men’s and women’s volleyball – in the same season.
“I’m going to do that until the passion runs out, when I’m not feeling competitive anymore. I still love it a lot.”
Sudbury Canoe Club: Established in 1902 as the Sudbury Boating Club, the Sudbury Canoe Club is being honoured as the second recipient of the Norm Mayer Dynasty Award, following in the footsteps of the Capreol Mazzucas fastball teams (2023). Though the site has changed from the foot of Elizabeth Street to the fancy new digs (2018) of the Northern Water Sports Centre, the commitment to outstanding water sport programming has not wavered.
The SCC has produced countless paddlers who were competitive on a national level, highlighted by the late fifties / early sixties run that would see the likes of Donald Stringer, John Beedell, Joe Derochie and Louis Loukanovich represent Sudbury at World Championships and a pair of Olympic Games.
In 2000, the club partnered with the Greater City of Sudbury and the Chinese Heritage Association to launch the annual Dragon Boat Festival, an event which spawned the birth of Team Chiro, a dragon boat crew that would ultimately make their way to world championships as well.
