Jane Shury steps down from Sask. Baseball Hall of Fame as Earl Berard takes over

“I would personally like to thank all the people over the many decades for their support of Dave in those early years and myself, my involvement since [the beginning],” Shury said. “I know that it’s in secure hands now, and I certainly wish them the very best in terms of maintaining the history of our baseball in this province.”

Taking over as president of the hall is Earl Berard, who used to be the president of Baseball Saskatchewan. Berard was a team leader for the 1990 Canadian world junior baseball team, which competed in Cuba.

In 1991, Berard was involved with the Canadian team which won the World Youth Championships in Brandon, MB. As a part of the team, Berard was inducted into the Canadian baseball hall of fame in 1992.

In 2007, he was inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame where he has served as a board member and gold sponsor ever since before taking over as president.

Berard had a significant part in crafting the system in which youth baseball is currently played in the province.

“In the late 80s when I was president of Saskatchewan baseball. Fred Gattinger from Moose Jaw, was vice, we would resemble an ad hoc committee. With the Ad Hoc Committee, we developed A, B, C, D, baseball, all by population. Now it’s single A, double A, triple-A, and we carried that forward to Western Canada.”

Berard mentioned that change helped the province go from 6,000 registered players to 20,000.

The new president cited that moving forward, he wants to grow the hall of fame’s online presence.

“Everything is there. It’ll spread throughout the whole province, but we got to communicate. We got to set up a strong communication system within our province with a strong newsletter. We got to make ourselves exposed. Here we are, and we’re going to accept the challenge.”

Berard, who pitched until he was 50 with the Kindersley Klippers senior baseball team, has Berard Field in Kindersley named after him.

As he steps into his new role, Berard is excited for his future.

“That I’ve been here all my life in this great province, and baseball, from grassroots to world champions, says something about a province. My attitude is that you can make anything happen. If you have a vision, the attitude, anything can happen.”

As Shury moves on, she made sure to give recognition to supporters across Saskatchewan. “There are people around the whole province that need to be thanked because of their support over the years, the many years of getting it together and getting this organization going,” she said.

“It’s been carried on and it will continue to be carried on with people who are baseball minded, respect and appreciate the value of history and the value of baseball in Saskatchewan.”

The hall of fame will celebrate its spring fling on Friday and looks forward to welcoming guests throughout the summer.

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Ryan.Lambert@pattisonmedia.com

by Ryan Lambert

Jane Shury steps down from Sask. Baseball Hall of Fame as Earl Berard takes over

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