Categories: Athlete, Coach, Builder

These days, Bruce Gant may be known as much for being the uncle of the best womens soccer player Canada has ever produced, Christine Sinclair, as his exploits on the pitch. But make no mistake he was pretty darn good. Gant grew up in Burnaby and stayed in the city for his collegiate career going to Simon Fraser University. He was on the backline for John Buchanans Clan when they won the 1976 NAIA mens soccer title at the famed Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., in the teams second year of existence. Gant then went on to spend five seasons in the original North American Soccer League. The Portland Timbers selected Gant, who continues to make Burnaby his home, in the first round of the 1979 NASL draft. He stayed with the Timbers for four seasons until 1982 when it folded. He played one game for the Montreal Manic in 1983. After his NASL stint, Gant helped the Vancouver Firefighters win provincial, Western Canadian and Canadian championship titles. He has also been a part of the Burnaby Girls Soccer Club success coaching teams to national championships and serving as the clubs technical director.

Patti McGuire swung a hot bat while playing the hot corner. During her residency in Burnaby, the Softball BC Hall of Fame member was on a team that won five Canadian championships. Prior to that she was on the Canadian team that won a silver medal at the 1978 world tournament in El Salvador as well as the one that came eighth in the 1974 Worlds in Stratford, Conn. McGuire played for legendary coach Adrian Lavigne on a star-studded squad that was known at different times, depending on the clubs sponsor of the day, as Green&Louie, Docs Blues and Alpha Sports. The teams she played on captured 11 Canadian titles. McGuire was named a national all-star five times. Provincially, her teams won 17 titles. During her career in league play, McGuire had a career batting average of .325. She was a run producer ranking first overall in runs batted in, runs scored and doubles while being second in home runs and extra base hits, all the while being a defensive stalwart at third base.

Joseph Scigliano, a product of Lochdale Elementary and Burnaby North Secondary, started playing with Cliff Avenue United when he was just four years old. It was the birth of a soccer sniper.
He led the Vikings to the AAA provincial high school boys championships in 1992 and 1994. In the last one he scored 10 goals in the tournament.
In his late teens he spent two months trying out for the junior team of the Stoke City Soccer Club of the English First Division. During his stint at Stoke he scored four goals in three games.
Scigliano played for Canadas under-20 team when it won the CONCACAF zone championship in 1996. The team again played in the world U20 tourney in Malaysia.
Although he also joined Scotlands Inverness FC for six months, Scigliano ended up staying closer to home joining the Vancouver 86ers playing for its reserve team and once for the senior team. He also helped the Philadelphia Kixx win the Major Indoor Soccer League title in 2001-02.

A Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame inductee in 2016, Dan Stroup, played 13 NLL seasons winning three Champions Cup titles (1999, 2000 and 2002) with the Toronto Rock and a fourth with the Colorado Mammoth (2006). He was named the most valuable player in the 2000 NLL championship game. He played for the WLAs Coquitlam Adanacs in three Mann Cup finals winning in 2001. Stroup sniped 320 goals and racked up 556 points in 224 WLA games. Stroup, who played all of his minor and junior lacrosse in Burnaby, also played seven seasons for the Burnaby Sr. Lakers. Dan represented Canada at the 2002 Heritage Cup mens indoor championships and the 2003 world indoor championships won by Canada as well as playing on the 1998 and 2002 mens national field lacrosse teams. Stroup has previously been inducted into the halls of fame of the Burnaby Jr. Lakers, he NLL and the Toronto Rock. After hanging up his stick, Stroup has coached for the Adanacs in the WLA, the NLLs Washington Stealth and Mammoth and provincial youth field teams