When Robert ‘Bob’ Wright was growing up, basketball and tennis were the dominant sports in the Wright household. But when your father is BC Sports Hall of Famer Ken Wright, the founder of the BC High School Boys Basketball Tournament and a tennis enthusiast, of course they would be. It then makes sense that Bob himself would also become heavily involved not just in playing these sports but organizing them at the provincial and national levels too. Ultimately, Bob made an indelible mark on BC sport just like his father before him and now follows him into the BC Sports Hall of Fame as the 27^th recipient of the prestigious W.A.C. Bennett Award.

Born in Vancouver, Bob grew up in New Westminster where the Wright house at 5^th Street and 5^th Avenue had a grass tennis court along the side that eventually became a homemade softball diamond. Bob played basketball at Lester Pearson High School (now New Westminster Secondary) and was a member at the New Westminster Tennis Club. Upon graduation in 1965, Bob made SFU’s first-ever basketball team and played there for four years. While going to law school on his way to years later becoming Regional Crown Counsel in BC’s Ministry of Justice, he played basketball at Queen’s University in Kingston too.

Back in Vancouver, it was fellow basketball player John Mills who convinced Bob to attend his first Basketball BC meeting in 1978 and largely for the next 15 years Bob volunteered his time as a key leader on multiple provincial and national sports bodies simultaneously. He served Basketball BC until 1984, from 1981 on as chair.

At the same time Bob joined the Tennis BC board of directors in 1980 and served for five years, from 1983 onward as chair. That overlapped with his 1984-89 term on Sport BC’s board, including serving as chair from 1986-88.

Bob’s most influential work may have been with Tennis Canada, joining their board in 1983 before serving as vice-president from 1985-87, president from 1987-89, and chair from 1989-91. During that time he built the model for the modern national sport organization, restructuring Tennis Canada to be the first staff-centered national sport federation in Canada while securing enough corporate sponsorship to cover their annual budget. He also helped create the Tennis Canada Hall of Fame and the Tennis Canada Excellence Awards, while developing new facilities for the Canadian Open (now National Bank Open) in Toronto and Montreal.

After helping bring the Federation Cup (now the Billie Jean King Cup) women’s tournament to West Vancouver’s Hollyburn Country Club in 1987—where a record turnout of over 61,000 spectators saw stars like Steffi Graf and Chris Evert play—Bob served on the International Tennis Federation’s Federation Cup Committee from 1987-89.

Written and researched by Jason Beck, Curator of the BC Sports Hall of Fame.