YORKTON - Water polo might not be the first sport one thinks about when considering Saskatchewan athletes but one put together such a notable career in the sport he is among the athletes being inducted into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame later this year.
Noah Miller will become the first athlete from water polo to be inducted.
“I was just surprised – elated. I felt honoured,” Miller said of learning of his selection, adding there is a level of gratification in being honoured for all the work he put into the sport.
Miller was born in Regina in 1980, and actually started out as a youth with a swim club in the city.
“I was five years old. Mom put me in the swim club because my older brother was in it,” Miller told Yorkton This Week in a recent interview.
But it so happened his mother Klara Kesmarky Miller was involved as the executive director of the provincial water polo organization, a sport the younger Miller was interested in.
“When I was 12 or 13 I told my mom I wanted to switch into water polo,” he recalled, adding his parents were always supportive of whatever sport activity he was involved in.
“. . . Both my parents were big proponents of sport. They supported me in anything that was sport-related. They just felt sport was a really good tool and instrument to develop kids.”
Interestingly Kesmarky Miller is also being inducted this year for her involvement in gymnastic which lasted more than 60 years. At 16 she judged her first provincial competition and was helping coach the Regina Girls Gym Club’s competitive program. Miller spent 27 years as a judge and launched the YWCA Limberettes Gym Club in her teens and then helped establish the Queen City Kinsmen Gymnastics Club. She would serve as the Chief Executive Officer of Gymnastics Saskatchewan for 30 years.
It will be the first induction to feature a parent and child being inducted at the same time who were not inducted together as part of a team.
Once involved in water polo it became a passion for Miller and he excelled at it.
He was first selected to the Canadian National Water Team as a Youth player in 1995, and continued his national team international career until his retirement in 2008.
Miller spent nine years on the Canadian men’s national water polo team including serving as the team’s captain for five of those years. Miller competed at six FINA World Championships, three FISU World University Games, and won bronze medals at the Pan Am Games twice in 2003 (Santo Domingo) and 2007 (Rio de Janeiro). Miller also won six Canadian national championships with three clubs tying the most by a Saskatchewan water polo player.
“There are no regrets with my path,” said Miller, adding he tried other sports, in particular basketball which his father was good enough to be a University of Regina Cougar in in the 1960s, but the hoops gene missed his son.
In water polo Miller said he found a completely different sport.
“The sport of water polo is so different from any other sport. You’re in a foreign environment,” he said.
But it is an environment Miller said creates a dynamic sport that deserves more attention, as it does in Europe and Australia with pro leagues, something he hopes for in North America one day.
“It’s been talked about for a long time,” he said, adding it will take a lot of work “to have that come to fruition.”
The 2025 Induction Dinner & Ceremony will be held at the Conexus Arts Centre in Regina on Saturday, Sept. 20.
