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A pair of Olympic medalists and a Grey Cup champion are a few of the 2026 inductees into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame.
The hall revealed its 2026 class, which includes Olympic rowing silver medalist, Cameron Baerg; Olympic heptathlon bronze medalist, Brianne Theisen-Eaton; two-time Grey Cup champion, Chris Getzlaf; and blind golfer, Otto Huber. Dr. Marlys Misfeldt and Ross Wilson are being inducted into the builder category.
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The hall is also inducting the 2011-14 Valkyries teams, who won the first four titles in the Western Women’s Canadian Football League’s history.
The 2026 induction dinner and ceremony will be at the Conexus Arts Centre in Regina on Sept. 26 this year. Tickets can be bought on the hall of fame’s website.
Chris Getzlaf
Getzlaf called it an incredible honour to be inducted into the hall of fame.
“It’s one thing to be able to get the opportunity to play professionally in the province where you grew up cheering for a team that’s Canada’s team. To be able to extend that and be honoured in this way with a group of people and people honoured in the past of this magnitude, it’s special,” Getzlaf said.
“It’s a surreal moment. You get a call like that and get your name enshrined with a bunch of great people that have paved the way ahead of you in multiple sports and organizations.”
Getzlaf grew up in Regina wanting to become a member of the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders. He had to take the long road to the league, playing junior football with the Regina Prairie Thunder before moving to the University of Regina Rams. He was an All-Canadian in 2006.
He was selected in the fifth round of the 2006 CFL Draft by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Getzlaf would be traded to the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2007 and remained on the practice squad as the team raised the Grey Cup that season.
“It’s a little bit of luck to land a job playing professionally with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the province you grew up in,” Getzlaf said.
Getzlaf would continue to improve and become a starter in 2010. He had over 1,000 yards receiving in two seasons (2011 and 2013).
He was a CFL West all-star in 2012 and 2013. Getzlaf and the Riders capped off the 2013 season by winning the Grey Cup at Mosaic Stadium. Named the game’s Most Outstanding Canadian, Getzlaf caught three passes for 78 yards in the 45-23 victory over the Tiger-Cats.
Getzlaf finished with 147 regular-season games played in the CFL, catching 414 passes for 6,192 yards and 41 touchdowns.
Brianne Theisen-Eaton
It was a bittersweet moment to be inducted into the hall of fame this year. Theisen-Eaton said her grandfather, George Theisen, had been talking about her getting the honour, but died last fall. He was a huge fan of track and field, attending plenty of her meets around the world.
“When I got the call, it kind of felt like a full circle moment with him speaking about it, and this happening. It’s an amazing honour to be inducted into the Sask. Hall of Fame. It’s not a small thing,” Theisen-Eaton said. “That was really exciting but to just know it was something my grandfather wanted and to see it happen was really cool.”
The Humboldt product competed at two Olympic Games in the sport of heptathlon, winning bronze in 2016 in Rio, Brazil.
She said looking back at growing up in Humboldt, she remembers running on the dirt track they had.
“I tell people that here (in the U.S.) and they are blown away that’s how my first track meet was,” Theisen-Eaton said. “I was just a sports kid. I did every sport I could possibly do. I just remember when I was able to do track and field in seventh grade, it came so natural to me and I just loved it.
“I think the other amazing thing about Saskatchewan is it’s a really small province so you get a lot of people rallying behind you when you’re excelling at something,” she shared.
“I’ve had a lot of people over the course of my career go, ‘How did someone from a small town get to where you are,’ and I truly think it’s because of the backing. The community, the coaches, the schools, everybody saw a talent and was like how could we help, how can we push this forward.”
Theisen-Eaton’s event features competition in seven different track and field disciplines, which means athletes need to be well-rounded to compete. The athlete competed at two Olympic Games, finishing 10th in 2012 in London and returning to competition again four years later, when she claimed a medal.
“It was a lot of work. I remember just being so mentally drained by the end of the 2016 Olympics in particular,” Theisen-Eaton said. “I remember (my dad) had a Canadian flag signed by not just my entire elementary school but other people in the community. He gave it to me before I left for Rio and I had it in my bag when I was competing.
“I remember keeping that Canadian flag in my bag and I’d pull it out and look at it and remember, ‘This is where you came from, look how far you’ve got, look how many people are at home watching.'”
Theisen-Eaton also won a gold medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, and was the 2016 IAAF World Indoor Champion in the pentathlon, which only features five events.
She holds the Canadian records for most points (6,808) in the heptathlon and the most points (4,768) in the indoor pentathlon.
Theisen-Eaton admits it’s cool to now be in the same hall of fame with people she grew up admiring, like Hayley Wickenheiser.
“I used to watch her growing up and I’m like, ‘Wow, she is the most amazing (player),’ and I used to talk to my dad about her and it’s like I am somehow on her level and inducted into the same hall of fame as she is. It’s really cool and probably hasn’t sunk in and maybe won’t for a long time.”
Cameron Baerg
Baerg enjoyed great success as a rower with the Canadian national team, becoming the first rower from the province to win a world title and an Olympic medal.
The Saskatoon product was a part of the 2004 team that nearly won gold at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece. The team lost by just 8/100ths of a second – a photo finish – after the
2,000-metre race. It was Canada’s only rowing medal at those Olympics.
He also won a world championship with the Canadian coxless fours in 2003 in Milan, Italy.
Otto Huber
Lipton’s Huber lost his vision after a hunting accident when he was 28 years old.
After his accident, he took up golf and became one of the best blind golfers in the world, winning the 1995 British Open Blind Golf Championship and finishing second at the 1977 United States Blind Golf Association National Championship.
Huber also served as the president of the Western Blind Golfer Association for ten years, helping organize tournaments and promote sports across Western Canadian.
Huber goes into the hall posthumously, as he died in 2022.
Dr. Marlys Misfeldt
For over 40 years, Misfeldt has worked to increase the safety and quality of care for athletes in the province, while improving the awareness of the need for safety policies and procedures in sport.
She worked in the sport of karate to help make the sport safer and has served on the International Traditional Karate Federation (ITKF) Sport Medicine Committee since 1995.
The Melfort product is also a karate participant herself and has been serving as the Chief Medical Officer for the provincial karate tournaments since 1987, twice yearly.
Misfeldt has been the president of the Sport Medicine Council of Saskatchewan twice, as well.
She has also worked at the university level, being the team physician for the University of Saskatchewan’s basketball and wrestling teams for 16 seasons. Since 2012, she has been the team physician for the Saskatoon Valkyries.
Ross Wilson
Wilson has spent more than 50 years building the sport of basketball in Saskatoon and around the globe.
He served as the president of Basketball Saskatchewan Inc. from 1975-81, and was the president of the Saskatoon Men’s Basketball League for more than a decade. He was part of the original group who started the minor basketball program in Saskatoon in 1969, which has now grown to more than 200 teams.
Wilson served as the President of Basketball Canada from 1982 to 1988. He hired the first full-time women’s national team coach and was also an executive member with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) from 1986 until 1990.
He was only the second Canadian to be an executive member with FIBA.
2011-2014 Saskatoon Valkyries Football Club
The Saskatoon Valkyries were the dominant force of the Western Women’s Canadian Football League when it first started. The team won the first four titles between 2011 and 2014.
It started in 2010 when Football Saskatchewan held a women’s tackle football clinic in the city to gauge women’s interest in the sport.
The early teams featured 14 players who had played varsity sports at the U-Sports or NCAA level. In just their third season, nine of their players and two alternates were selected to represent Canada at the International Federation of American Football (IFAF) Women’s World Championship.
