Moose Jaw wrestler Justin Abdou has gotten the call to the hall, as he is being inducted into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame on Saturday. The SSHOF announced its class of 2021 last year, with Abdou being inducted as an athlete. Their 54th annual induction ceremony will take place on Saturday at the Conexus Arts Centre in Regina.
Abdou is a nine-time Canadian champion, the Cadet world champion in 1987 and won gold at the 1994 Commonwealth Games.
He would go on to wear the maple leaf, representing Canada at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics.
This isn't Abdou's first induction into a hall of fame. He is also a member of the Canadian Amateur Wrestling Hall of Fame, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Hall of Fame and the Moose Jaw and District Sports Hall of Fame.
"It means a lot. The older you get, people start to recognize your accomplishments. In the last year, I've been inducted into a few of these things, but I think the Saskatchewan one is the most meaningful to me because that is where I formed my love for sport. I grew up in a sporting family and a sporting community and did all kinds of sports," Adbou said.
Abdou retired from competitive wrestling in 2002 and he is now a wrestling coach at Simon Fraser University.
Other inductees in the athletes' category include Fillmore trapshooter Rod Boll, Porcupine Plain track and cross-country skier Colette Bourgonje, Saskatoon's Kaylyn Kyle for soccer and bobsledder Lyndon Rush from Humboldt.
Being inducted in the builder category is Shannon Miller of Tisdale for hockey.
The team category will be inducting the 2000-2001 University of Regina Cougars women's basketball team and the 2013 Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Below is the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame's induction class announcement: