Darrell Davis: Volleyball’s Wayne Hellquist took winding road to Hall

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Be warned, potential volunteers. It starts innocently enough and suddenly — 50 years after stumbling onto some committee — you’re being inducted into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame.

That’s how it happened for Wayne Hellquist, whose commitment to volleyball began with a disgruntled appearance at a board meeting and culminated half a century later as one of seven inductees into the Class of 2024 who will be feted Sept. 28 at the Conexus Arts Centre.

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“I had no idea any of this even existed when we started,” Hellquist said during a reflective chat among the displays inside the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.

“I went to an annual meeting of the Saskatchewan Volleyball Association because I had a complaint about something. I don’t remember what it was. It would have been 1973 or ’74, I was coaching a high school team and a club team and I had a beef about something. So I thought ‘I’ll show up to the annual meeting and raise my concerns.’ I’d never been to an annual meeting, didn’t know what it was, had no idea what happened at an annual meeting.

“There were 13 people in attendance at the annual meeting and 12 of them got elected to the board. I was elected as president!”

There have been lots of meetings since then. Lots of committees, events and accomplishments, including becoming the first Saskatchewanian to chair the Canadian Olympic Committee (on an interim basis), serving as vice-president of Volleyball Canada and being appointed as Canada’s chef de mission for the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney. He remains involved with paravolley.

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Along the way he attended the 1996 Games in Atlanta, where he rubbed shoulders with Muhammad Ali and walked through Centennial Olympic Park moments before a pipe bomb exploded, killing one person and injuring more than 100.

“I was on the COC executive and there were two candidates for chef de mission for the 2000 Olympics, both from Saskatoon and both of whom knew each other very well,” said Hellquist. “Of course Diane Jones-Konihowski was chosen. I wasn’t going to win over her in a million years.”

Hellquist subsequently got called by the Canadian Paralympic Committee’s president, asking if he would be interested in serving as chef for the 2000 Games.

“So … let me think about that awhile,” said Hellquist. “Sydney? Certainly! That was my first international experience.

“I will never forget the feeling of walking into the opening ceremony in Sydney at the head of the Canadian team behind our flag-bearer. There’s 200 (Canadian athletes) and 115,000 people in the stadium giving us standing ovations because we are Canada.”

Hellquist was born in North Battleford but worked in Saskatoon and Regina. His first teaching job was in Allan. He was the athletic director at the University of Regina and played a role in establishing the Canadian women’s volleyball team’s training centre in the Queen City during the 1980s. He got convinced to become Synchro Saskatchewan’s executive director, becoming at the time “the only male in the country employed by the sport of synchronized swimming.”

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Hellquist was part of the community gardens known as Grow Regina, joined the Living Skies Chorus 11 years ago to sing barbershop-style harmonies with a 27-man group whose next concert is May 4 (“May the fourth be with you,” he said with a chuckle), was CEO of the Regina Food Bank and United Way of Regina and worked awhile with the Farm Credit and Saskatchewan Transportation corporations.

During his involvement with Sask Sport, he helped form the “Sask First” initiative that recruited and developed top-level coaches to improve this province’s national performances. Along with Ron Taylor, he got artists involved with commemorating Saskatchewan’s Hall of Famers.

“The whole idea was when we got the new (Sask Sport) facility in Saskatoon there were acres of blank walls,” said Hellquist. “Rather than buy artwork, let’s have a curated art show. We’ll pay the artists and that way we’ve got artists engaged in doing sports stuff that they would never have done before.”

Hmmm, getting someone involved in something new? Hellquist didn’t even play high school volleyball; he was playing basketball and working towards an education degree at the University of Saskatchewan when he got invited to join the volleyball team.

“None of what you do is ever done to achieve this,” said Hellquist. “This is icing on the cake. This is not the cake.”

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