Fred Ingaldson

Fred Ingaldson began his basketball career in high school and was named Ukrainian Athlete of the Year at the end of his four-year tenure with the team. He joined the Winnipeg Light Infantry basketball squad in 1950 and helped them win the Canadian National Junior Championship in 1952 and 1953. His next stop was the Montana State University where, attending on an athletic scholarship, he became the first person from the Canadian province of Manitoba to play NCAA Division 1 basketball. Among his many honors as a collegiate player were three district championships (1954-1956) and multiple recognitions as a league all-star. He then returned to his native Canada and brought two amateur teams to the national finals: the St. Vital Bulldogs (1957) and the Tillsonburg Livingstons (1958).

Ingladson took his talents international in 1959 as a member of Canada’s delegation to that year’s Pan-American Games, where the nation finished fifth among seven countries. He was then selected for the squad sent to the 1960 Summer Olympics but, although he played in several pre-Olympic demonstrations, he did not participate in any official matches. That changed in 1964 when Ingaldson saw court time in nine games, although only one of those, a 82-81 victory over Peru, ended in a win, leaving Canada to finish 14th of 16 countries. In the mid-1960s his role on amateur teams shifted to player-coach, but he still competed at the 1967 Pan-American Games held in Winnipeg, where Canada finished ninth among ten nations.

Ingaldson did not retire from active competition until 1971, when he was nearly 40, but remained involved in the sport as a coach, organizer, and broadcaster. Outside of sports he was the owner of a Winnipeg grocery store. He was made a member of the Manitoba Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983, the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame in 2000, the Canada Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002, and the Montana State Bobcats Hall of Fame in 2011.