Four champions, whose routes to the highest level of their sports were forged in Albany, were inducted into the city’s Sporting Walk of Fame at a ceremony on Thursday evening at Retravision Stadium.
Plaques paying tribute to Tricia Heberle, Wayne Smith, Diane Martin (nee Jackson) and Jodie Cooper have been installed on the walkway to the stadium to honour athletes for whom humble origins in Albany proved the starting point to great things.
About 90 people attended the inauguration including family and friends of the inductees and representatives from their sports of hockey, golf, netball and surfing.
To qualify for the City of Albany’s Sporting Walk of Fame, inductees had to have reached the highest level of participation in their sports, with time in Albany being key to their development.
Tricia Heberle, who started with Spencer Park Primary and then Albany Senior High School before representing Australia in hockey at the 1984 Olympics, was the first to be inducted.
After her playing career she moved into coaching and was an assistant to the gold-medal-winning Hockeyroos of the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics before becoming head coach of England and Great Britain’s women.
After a spell as performance director at Hockey Australia, she returned to Europe and was chef de mission of team Ireland at the Tokyo Games of 2021 before taking charge of Ireland’s Olympic boxing campaign at Paris in 2024.
Next up was golfer Wayne Smith, the 1983 Australian Amateur champion who went on to forge a successful professional career on the American, European and Japanese tours.
Another Albany SHS pupil, he was the first Australian to enter the US college system and he has plaques in his honour in the clubhouse at the University of Georgia after earning all-American honours.
As a professional he won the Victorian PGA and the South Australian Open before claiming back-to-back wins in Japan and then the Indonesian Open.
The family of Diane Martin, who died in 2013, spoke on behalf of the woman who represented Australia at netball and who was a superb all-round athlete.
Fiercely combative at wing defence, Martin played for the Australian Diamonds in 1982 and was inducted into Netball WA Court of Champions in 2023.
Her daughters Kelly and Tasha, along with brother Weston, remembered Jackson as a mother and sister as well as a passionate sportswoman who reached the top before returning to Albany to help its future generations of netballers.
Jodie Cooper, a member of the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame, was the final inductee and a winner of 13 international events during the 1980s and 1990s.
She missed out on a world championship by a fraction of a point while also being a key voice in turning the women’s tour into the multimillion-dollar circuit it is today.
The proceedings opened with an emotional address from City of Albany mayor Greg Stocks who remembered the contribution of predecessor Dennis Wellington whose final civic duty had been to sit on the panel to select the Walk of Fame four.
“I was not on the judging panel, but I know every one of the four people that have been inducted personally,” he said.
“We’re recognising people who have gone the extra mile, done the extra hard yard, left Albany.
“Every one of them, in true Dennis Wellington style, has maintained their connection to this beautiful city.”
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