Eli Pasquale was from Sudbury, Ont., but his main sporting exploits took place in his adopted province, which will honour him Thursday night by posthumously inducting the two-time Olympian and former University of Victoria basketball great into the sa国际传媒 Sports Hall of Fame with the Class of 2021.
“My dad felt so embraced by this community and loved how he connected with it,” said son Isiah Pasquale.
“This would have meant so much to him.”
Pasquale died in 2019 at age 59 of esophageal cancer.
“Eli was a giant. He was my hero,” basketball Hall of Fame point-guard Steve Nash, a two-time NBA MVP, said during the Pasquale tribute celebration held in McKinnon Gym in November of 2019.
Nash grew up watching point-guard Pasquale play in McKinnon Gym and leading UVic to five of its seven-consecutive national titles and sa国际传媒 to fourth- and sixth-place in the 1984 Los Angeles and 1988 Seoul Olympics.
“Eli’s passion and commitment were an incredible education for me. Eli’s competitive fire was world class. He should have played in the NBA, but times were different back then,” Nash said.
“Eli passed a lot of that opportunity on to me. He told me: ‘You can play in the NBA.’ You don’t know how powerful that was for a young person to hear. I lived an incredible life and a lot of that was because of the lessons Eli taught me.”
It is fitting that Pasquale will now join Nash, a 2016 inductee, in the sa国际传媒 Sports Hall of Fame. It is also fitting that the first UVic national championship team of 1979-80, on which Pasquale was a freshman star, is being inducted Thursday with the Class of 2020 during the ceremonies at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
The enshrinement ceremony for the Class of 2020 has yet to be held due to the pandemic hitting just after the Class was named. So the Classes of 2020 and 2021 are being inducted concurrently today.
Joining Pasquale in the Class of 2021 is former Vancouver Canucks player Gino Odjick, World Cup soccer player Dale Mitchell, colourful wrestling legend Gene Kiniski, Paralympian Jason Delesalle, all-rounder Gerry Gilmore, field-hockey builder/coach Judy Broom, sport psychologist David Cox, multi-sport builder Kelly Mann, CBC sports reporter Karin Larsen and the 1961-62 Vancouver Firefighters soccer team.
Victoria’s Mann was 26 years with the sa国际传媒 Games, the last 19 as president and CEO. He oversaw the transition of the organization from a recreational Games to a developmental model from which athletes go on to the sa国际传媒 Games and from there internationally to the Pan Am, Commonwealth and Olympic Games. The sa国际传媒 Games alumni list of Olympians from the Island includes Jamie Benn, Mike Saunders, Ryder Hesjedal, Fred Winters, Riley McCormick, Gary Reed, Clare Rustad among many others, and sa国际传媒 wide, from Carey Price and Brent Seabrook to Dylan Armstrong and Carol Huynh.
“This [induction] honour is validation of the entire sa国际传媒 Games organization and the impact it has had on sport development in the province,” said Mann.
Meanwhile, joining coach Ken Shields’ 1979-80 UVic basketball team in the Class of 2020 induction portion is former Canucks goaltender Kirk McLean, former MLB pitcher Jeff Francis, former sa国际传媒 Lions all-star CFL defensive lineman Brent Johnson, Olympic and Tour de France cyclist Alex Stieda, Paralympics gold-medallist curler Sonja Gaudet, sa国际传媒 sports writer Cleve Dheensaw, wrestling builder/coach Bill Mitchell, trampoline coach/builder Valerie Johnson and hockey pioneer Robin Bawa of Duncan, the first Indo-Canadian to play in the NHL.
The Classes of 2020 and 2021 will join the 406 individuals and 63 teams previously inducted into the sa国际传媒 Sports Hall of Fame since its founding in 1966. The Hall is located in sa国际传媒 Place Stadium.
