YARMOUTH, N.S. – The Yarmouth Town and County Sports Heritage Association will hold its annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony Saturday, May 19, at the Rodd Grand Hotel, with three individuals and one team to be inducted.
The following is some information on this year’s inductees:
Bryan Hipson
Bryan Hipson has been a fixture on the provincial running scene for years and has excelled at a variety of distances. He ran his first marathon at the age of 40 and in the 12 years since has completed over 30 of them. The following are just some of his achievements and highlights:
Since 2012, he has been repeatedly ranked as top masters (age class 40-49) and senior masters (age class 50-59) in the Run Nova Scotia road race series, and numerous times was selected as masters runner on the team that represented Nova Scotia at the national 10K championship. In the new Scotiabank Run Nova Scotia Performance Series, he received the award for top male masters runner in 2015 and top senior male masters runner in 2016.
At the 10K distance, Hipson placed first in the Sheila Poole race in Yarmouth in 2015 at age 49 with a time of 34:57 (which remains his personal best for this distance). He also won the Sheila Poole event in 2016 and 2017.
At 50, Hipson became the oldest winner of the Blue Nose Marathon in Halifax in 2016, covering the 42.2-km course in 2:46:39. He also became the first person from Yarmouth to win that marathon. He also had first-place finishes at the Nova Scotia Marathon in Barrington (2015) and the Johnny Miles Marathon in New Glasgow (2017).
Hipson also is an accomplished triathlete. He placed sixth in his age class at the Ironman Mont-Tremblant in August 2016 in a time of 10:26:30, his personal best for Ironman. That qualified him for the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, where he placed 124th among the 50-59-year-olds in October of the same year.
Shannon Smith
Shannon Smith learned to swim as an infant and has not looked back since. He played for hours at a time as a young child in the deep end at the Yarmouth Y pool until he showed a readiness to learn more at about seven years of age. He quickly picked up all four competitive strokes and, by the time he was nine, he was setting provincial records in yards. Unfortunately, those records are no longer kept by Swimming Canada.
At the age of 11-12 he held Nova Scotia age group records in metres for 50 and 100-metre freestyle, 200 IM and 100 breaststroke. He continued to set provincial and Atlantic Canadian records in the same events, including the 200 and 400 free. He made national times at 15 and was selected to the 1985 Nova Scotia Canada Games team in the 100-metre free. He was the youngest male member on the team.
Smith continued setting provincial and Atlantic records until he left the province at 18 to attend university in California. At the University of California San Diego, he set pool team records in the 200 and 400 IM and at the NCAA championships (Division III). His relay teams were gold medal winners in the 200 and 400 medley relays while setting a national record in those relays. Smith continues to swim regularly and has competed in several rough-water relay swims with fellow swimmers in his age bracket. One of his favourite other sports is surfing.
Tessa Boudreau
Tessa Boudreau started playing hockey at the age of four, although her method of stopping skating at the time was to hit the boards at the end of the rink. As she was the only girl playing at the time, she joined the boys team and played boys rep hockey at various levels, fracturing both clavicles along the way.
Her father eventually organized a tri-county midget girls team and she continued to play summer hockey on the Fury, Raiders and Atlantic Selects teams. In Grade 10 she was awarded a hockey scholarship to play defence for Ridley College in Ontario until her graduation with honours in Grade 12. She was selected for the Nova Scotia Canada Games hockey team, which went to Whitehorse in 2007.
Boudreau went on to play two years of women’s varsity hockey at Dalhousie University while completing a degree in neuroscience until she decided to concentrate on academics in her effort to gain acceptance to medical school. She continued to serve as equipment manager, earning her the “manager of the year” award at the university.
She graduated from Ottawa University Faculty of Medicine in 2017 and decided to return home to Yarmouth and began a residency program in family medicine at the Yarmouth Regional Hospital.
Yarmouth Concrete & Gravel mosquito baseball team
In 1986 the Yarmouth Concrete & Gravel Mosquito D team won the provincial championship. The team stayed together in 1987 and registered as Yarmouth Concrete & Gravel Mosquito B. They hosted provincials that year and were champs again, defeating Liverpool 18-3 in the title game.
David Muise was the winning pitcher in the ‘87 final and he also hit two homeruns, a triple and a single and had six RBI. Named to the all-star team were: David Muise (centre field), Craig Crosby (left field), Colin Jeffery (second base) and Sheldon Saulnier (first base). Team MVP was Colin Jeffery.
The Yarmouth team then went on to Woodstock N.B., to play in the Atlantic championships. Yarmouth advanced to the title game by defeating teams from P.E.I. and Newfoundland.
In a 5-4 win over P.E.I., Yarmouth’s Scott Boudreau was the winning pitcher with 11 strikeouts and David Muise was chosen game MVP. In an 18-0 victory over Newfoundland, pitcher Justin Walters was named game MVP.
Yarmouth defeated Woodstock 2-0 in the championship contest, Colin Jeffery pitching a seven-strikeout game and driving in the second of his team’s two runs. He was the game’s MVP.
