N.B. Sports Hall of Fame celebrates top athletes for Black History Month

The accomplishments of a Grey Cup champion, a softball player who won silver at the Pan Am Games and a 100-yard sprinter who bet on himself in 1905 are all being highlighted this month by New Brunswick’s Sports Hall of Fame.

Executive director Jamie Wolverton says just seven of the Hall’s 780 inductees, or less than one per cent, are Black.

He said the lack of recognition is related to the fact that the Hall of Fame relies on public nominations and “the black population in New Brunswick hasn’t been large over the last 170 years.”

For Black History Month, the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame is sharing the stories of three Black inductees from different corners of the province.

Janiva Willis was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2022, becoming the first black female inductee, according to Wolverton.

Willis was a softball player who played on the Canadian Women's Softball Team which won silver at the 2007 Pan American Games in Brazil. She also won gold at the 2007 World University Games and received the NCAA's South Carolina Woman of the Year Award in 2005 in recognition of her combined academic and athletic achievements.

Willis died in 2016 at 33 years old. She was killed while in the United States for a bike trip, raising money for her non-profit youth mentoring foundation, when the car she was a passenger in was hit by a transport truck. There is now a field named after her in Irishtown, just of north of Moncton, where she was born.

Chris Skinner was a CFL player. He played football at Simonds High School and was drafted by Bishop University, where he played in 1982 and 1983, winning rookie, MVP and outstanding player awards.

His professional career began when he was drafted in 1984's first round by Edmonton. He then played with the Ottawa Rough Riders in 1989 and the B.C. Lions from 1990-1993.

Wolverton said Skinner "played for a total of 10 seasons with three different teams … He had many significant accomplishments, but the major one is that he won the national championships, so he won the Grey Cup with the Edmonton team in 1987."

He was inducted into Saint John Sports Hall of Fame in 1997 and the NB Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.

Eldridge Eatman was a sprinter inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2016. He is recorded as being the fastest Canadian 100-metre sprinter in 1905, with a time of 9.8 seconds. At the time, the measurements were done in yards, Wolverton said, because Canada hadn't adopted the metric system yet; however, "100 yards is equivalent to 91.4 metres."

He said that today's 100-metre athletes run the distance in approximately the same time but Eatman was running in the early 1900s, when training, nutrition and track conditions were not at the same level.

"It's just phenomenal to think that Eldridge was achieving those times back at the turn of the century," he said.