NEWS FILE PHOTO
Medicine Hat golfer Kelly Risling at Medicine Hat Golf and Country Club in July 2015.
rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken
Kelly Risling has walked past the Medicine Hat Sports Wall of Fame countless times while making his way through the Family Leisure Centre, but he’ll never look at it the same way after tonight.
Risling is one of three Hatters who will join the ranks of the city’s most memorable faces in sport at tonight’s induction ceremony, earning the honour alongside Salta Gymnastics head coach Eva Paniti-Meyer and former pro football player Dan Federkeil.
“I work out there pretty much every morning, Monday to Friday, and I’ve been walking by that wall for years always thinking it would be nice to some day get on there,” Rissling said after a round of golf Thursday. “Now that it’s coming to fruition there’s some surrealness to it, I suppose. It’s not something I’m ever going to take for granted, because it’s there forever, long after I’m gone. I just can’t think of a higher honour in this city, sports-wise, for me or for anybody, than to be on that wall.”
Risling is no stranger to success in the Gas City. The 62-year-old golfer has won dozens of local tournaments in the past, and even went on to become the Alberta mid-amateur champion in 1996 and runner-up in 2009. Given his wealth of accomplishments, Risling says he sees the induction as an accumulation of all his success on the links.
“That’s the key word, it’s an accumulation. I’ve golfed for 52 years. That’s a long time. It’s a long time to try to stay competitive, although the last few years it’s sort of been waning, so to speak, and I’ve kind of resigned myself to senior golf now,” he said. “I don’t want to think that my days of winning are over, because I’ve still got some senior ability left, but it’s an accumulation of a lot of victories and it’s nice to be recognized for that.”
In 2015, Risling earned a spot at the Canadian Senior Men’s Championship at Desert Blume, where he represented the Gas City by finishing tied 16th with a 73-69-79-221 on a weekend filled with challenging weather.
“The weather was so bad that weekend, but the second round I played in that tournament where I shot 69 in the rain and wind to get into the top 10, it was one of the most rewarding rounds I think I’ve ever played,” said Risling, adding he had to wait a long time for the chance to play a marquee event in his hometown. “When I was a junior up until I was in my 50s there had never been a provincial tournament in Medicine Hat, so I always had to travel, and I travelled across the country. I’ve played competitively in every province except Newfoundland.”
While Risling will become the first golfer to grace the wall of fame at tonight’s induction ceremony, as far as he’s concerned, he isn’t going in alone.
“To be on there for golf, to be the first one on there for golf, that really means a lot to me. It’s not easy to get on that wall, or it would be full, but it’s not. I think there are a lot of people who got behind me,” he said. “I don’t look at it as just me going in, I look at it as all the competitors I’ve played with over the years, and my family, to me it’s like we’re going on that wall together and I sincerely mean that.”
The Medicine Hat Sports Wall of Fame ceremony is set for tonight at 7 p.m.
