As a sport builder, Al Hollingsworth’s career has spanned over five decades and has covered most angles of sport including coaching, officiating, media and administrative work. Hollingsworth began coaching hockey and baseball in the 1950’s and continued coaching for many years moving between the different ranks of each sport. His dedication to coaching and sport was evident when one season he coached three hockey teams as well as served as the president and general manager of the Halifax Junior Kingfishers. His administrative work increased, as among many other titles, he was the founding president of the Halifax Blues Senior Hockey Club, president of the Nova Scotia Senior Hockey League, president of the Maritime Junior A’ Hockey League and director of the Sackville Sports Heritage Hall of Fame. Hollingsworth even participated in officiating. He refereed hockey, umpired baseball and served as ring announcer for the Halifax Boxing Commission. But that is not all. Al Hollingsworth involved himself in yet another side of sport. During his military career while stationed in Ontario and unable to coach, he became a sports editor, a role he continued back home in Nova Scotia. He also was a well known radio personality and was a regular on a weekly sports show on MITV. There are few that can say their participation in sport has lasted five decades or that it has covered such a broad spectrum, Al Hollingsworth can say both.
Annual Program
While on one of my first assignments as a television reporter, a local and prominent sports figure asked me if I was Al Hollingsworth’s son. After I nodded in the affirmative, he replied, “You’re from good stock.”
Over the span of my career, and my life for that matter, it’s a refrain I have heard many times. My father is not only a great Nova Scotian — he truly is a great man. He’s a man who has for almost six decades, forged a reputation as being someone who has selflessly volunteered his time to help others. He’s the kind of person who belongs in a hall of fame.
Like other inductees, my father has worn many hats in his lifetime – a man for all seasons if you will.
For more than fifty years he was a sports official, coach and administrator. The depth of his commitment to amateur sports in this province was never more evident than in 1961-62. That was the year he coached midget, pee wee and high school hockey teams while also working as the president and general manager for the Halifax Junior Kingfishers, a team that would eventually advance to the Memorial Cup quarter finals.
As a journalist, he worked tirelessly to promote amateur sports in the Maritime media. During his tenure as sports editor for the Halifax Daily News in the early 1980’s, he spearheaded an effort that shifted the emphasis from national and international sports to “local sports first”. It worked, and in time, it was a formula copied by others.
As a father and husband, he never forgot about his family, and every chance he had, he made sure his sons were at his side to share his experiences. Whether it was watching Darryl Sittler’s winning goal in the 1976 Canada Cup, or taking us on our yearly pilgrimage to Montreal to watch our beloved baseball team, my dad recognized early that his career brought with it a chance to enrich the lives of his two boys — and he took full advantage of that opportunity.
Halls of Fame are usually a domain for people who achieve great athletic feats. But, thankfully, they also recognize the contributions of our most outstanding citizens — people who, for reasons that have nothing to do with ego or hubris, give simply because they want to because they want to help young people.
Being inducted into this great shrine isn’t something my father asked for. It wasn’t a personal goal or even a secret ambition, and that, I believe, is the best part of the story. Al Hollingsworth is a remarkable man who in many ways has devoted his life to Nova Scotia. Tonight Nova Scotia gives something back.
The Hollingsworth family couldn’t be prouder.
Annual Program Courtesy of Paul Hollingsworth