In sports, we rank the top major junior hockey teams in the country, the high school girls' and boys' basketball teams in our area and which players might go where in the National Hockey League draft each year.

With the help of all members of the sports department, we have put together the first London Free Press list of the most powerful and influential people in London sports. We have gone 25 deep in this absolutely arbitrary ranking.

He's president of the London Junior Knights minor hockey organization. It's no coincidence that the Junior Knights program has taken huge strides in player development and profile since he really started to get involved.

But he's also chairperson of the Oakridge Optimists baseball committee, second vice-president of the London and District Baseball Association, and sits on the board of the St. Joseph's Health Foundation as chair of finance.

He's a vice-president of corporate finance for PriceWaterhouseCoopers. But it's his life as a volunteer and organizer that winds up giving the community big returns.

There was a time when the words "sports event attraction" meant anywhere other than London. No longer is that the case, thanks in large degree to Tourism London.

Improved sports facilities have been the catalyst for the city but Tourism London did some big-time dreaming -- when dreaming big was never a possibility in this city.

Tourism London works in conjunction with individuals and organizations that want to bring major, and not so major, events to London. Since its establishment in 1996, Tourism London has made sports tourism a big deal.

Next on the list is the Scott Tournament of Hearts Canadian women's curling championship in February. Tourism London had a hand in the Canada Summer Games, world Transplant Games and world inline hockey championship.

Inch is chairperson of the 2006 Scott Tournament of Hearts at the John Labatt Centre. 'Hurry hard' is yelled during a curling game, exhorting sweepers to work harder to get a rock to go where it's supposed to go.

Inch did a lot of hard sweeping to bring the Canadian women's championship to London, knowing it's probably the most difficult of the major national events to sell. But hard work has never been an issue with him.

He chaired the very successful 2002 Canadian seniors championship in St. Thomas and played a big role in bringing the JVC Skins Game also to St. Thomas.

Doug Alexander, a member of the board of directors at the London Hunt and Country Club, went to work bringing the tournament to London, figuring if a sponsor was found, his club might as well be first in line to stage the event.

When the RCGA convinced CN to come on board as the major sponsor, the Hunt Club had itself a premier golf event. Alexander did a job convincing not only the RCGA to bring the event here, but also the Hunt Club members to give up their golf course for a week.

As a result, the championship will be at the Hunt Club next August, dangling a $1.7-million purse in front of some of the world's elite swingers. The money puts the tournament among the Top 10 LPGA events for the year.

Lysko specializes in sports and brand marketing. He's a media savvy guy and immediately injected life into a moribund marketing program at the university. He revamped ticket sales to its sports events, particularly football. He changed a long-standing tradition by selling tickets on the student side of the field to non-students. The result was more fans in the stands.

Painter has positioned his organization near the top of the girls' minor soccer explosion. It's one of the fastest growing areas of sport in Canada and as such, is also one of the most competitive.

Painter is a no-nonsense guy. His London Supernova has grown into a competitive organization that rivals such traditional powers as Oakville. Painter is a three-time national champion, the lastest crown coming when his under-14 girls won in Moncton this year.

Fans come out and see the end product . . . a world championship, a 50-team minor hockey tournament, a 150-team soccer event, or a massive basketball tournament.

They rarely stop to think about who organizes where all those teams eat, how they get where they're going to play and where they will be able to catch a few Zs.

London's CSTT Sports Management International is the business behind all those details, getting thousands of players, parents and teams from A to B, and on to Z, if necessary.

Gary Curgin is the executive director. His company was involved in the Memorial Cup, the world inline hockey championship, and will be involved in the 2007 world field lacrosse championship. CSTT has helped make London the hub for Basketball Ontario championships.

This year, over five weekends of basketball, 600 teams, more than 15,000 players, parents and officials will be coming to London. Some 7,000 room nights are booked.

The long-time Catholic Central Crusaders coach has gone to the city final 19 years in succession, with his team winning the last two championships.

And if you need to reach him on a Sunday, he can often be found in his CCH office organizing his week because that's usually the only time he has to himself.

Have you taken a dip in a municipal pool, skated on a rink, or maybe played parchese at a community centre? Yes? Then Janie Romoff has most likely had a hand in it.

For the past five years, Romoff has been London's director of parks and recreation. She's helped guide the city through growth spurts in recreation and personal leisure. That growth has included six new ice pads, dozens of soccer fields and a 2003 master plan for facilities, programs, services and strategies.

But while sports facilities have captured the headlines, Romoff and her department have not neglected the oft-forgotten group of individuals who don't use sports facilities. Long-term planning has seen growth in the business of personal leisure. The South London Community Centre has increased its space so that everyone from kids to seniors can benefit. There are long-term plans in place that will see similar changes made to other community centres.

Canada's Mr. Stock Car Racing, Tony Novotny recognized long before anyone else that the huge popularity of stock car racing in the United States would eventually make its way north.

He founded the Canadian Association for Stock Car Auto Racing in 1981 and with it the national Super Series, which is still going strong. Two series races are held annually at Delaware Speedway, which is considered the home of CASCAR, and these events draw as many as 10,000 spectators.

Novotny operated Delaware from 1979 through 2000 and under his leadership, improvements were made to the popular paved half-mile oval. Delaware and Merrittville Speedway in Thorold share the distinction of being the oldest continuously used tracks in Canada, both opening in 1952. Novotny has orchestrated many changes and innovations in Canadian motorsports and CASCAR is the largest sanctioning body for stock car racing in this country.

Dart, a relative unknown in sports circles, purchased the London Majors two years ago from Arden Eddie, who had owned the team since baseball's dead-ball era, or so it seemed. Dart then sold a portion of the franchise to Roop Chanderdart. The two became co-owners of the OHA junior development league Lambeth Lancers earlier this year.

Dart, 39, is a mortgage and financial expert. He's a hands-on owner, doing whatever needs doing with the Majors, even if that means selling hot dogs at Labatt Park.

He came back to work at Western Fair earlier this year after seven years with the Woodbine Entertainment Group. His new role here is to expand the horizons and popularity of the raceway and to improve its relations with the horse people. Western Fair is also a big business, with 750 slots, a multi-pad ice rink and a new agricultural facility.

Mitchell is a top racing executive. He had good gate speed in extending race dates at WFR, to increase interest and to benefit those working and competing at the track.

He came on strong in the backstretch by battling an offshore betting problem, which lures bettors from tracks to Internet betting. He then got Canada's voice of harness racing, the legendary Frank Salive, to come back to London and work at the track.

That puts executive director Cheryl Finn in touch with the community, from the embryonic stages of an event to the birth of an organization. The council was designed to bring together sports and recreation groups to promote sports, to network and to facilitate the organization of athletic events.

Through the council, Finn helps in the operation of the London Sports Hall of Fame and KidSport, a national program with provincial offices. KidSport London assists local kids overcome social and economic barriers which have prevented or limited their participation in sport. Finn administrates the Spirit of Sport Awards for volunteers, administrators and coach-of-the-year awards.

He has done it all in volleyball. He played and coached at Western and developed a high school program at Oakridge that is the envy of high schools everywhere. Peckham was a pioneer in the advancement of club volleyball, forming the Forest City Volleyball Club and then serving as its first president.

And proving he's as adept with balls of any size, he placed fourth at the Canadian senior men's amateur golf tournament this fall. He plays out of Sunningdale.

Mention soccer to Tom Partalas and you'd better have some spare time on your hands. There's always a project on the go, a situation to make better or a story to tell about how soccer is growing in London.

Partalas is a director in the London and District Youth Soccer League. He was a major player in the soccer fields task force that saw the construction and improvement of several fields and the development of the North London Soccer Complex.

Last winter, he scored on a "cracker of a shot." He helped broker a deal which, with luck, guarantees thousands of soccer players a place to play indoors for now and the future. Partalas convinced the London Optimists to invest in the sport. They purchased the land on which the London Soccer Dome is located.

You don't hear much about these volunteers because they do their thankless work behind the scenes, providing your kids with a better place to play.

Dan Pulham is one of those volunteers. He's been involved with baseball and hockey in London for years. He's been on the board of the Forest City Hockey League for 17 years and is now its board's chairperson. The league operates 129 teams. He is also the local representative for the Minor Hockey Alliance of Ontario. In the summer, it's baseball. He's president of the London and District Baseball Association.

He's always up to fill in the 15 or so free minutes he has each day. He's volunteered for the Canada Summer Games, the Ontario Winter and Summer Games and was on the city's ball diamond task force.

But not all the cities have someone with the ability to land the quadruple jumps and to land the big events. Bill Boland has landed two of those big jumps.

Boland is a Londoner and a member of Skate Canada's board of directors. He has been the financial/planning chairperson, dealing with that organization's $15-million budget.

He performed the equivalent of a quad-triple combination in skating, landing last year's Canadian championships for London and the 2007 world synchronized championship.

Skate Canada has presented him with its Billie Mitchell award for outstanding service. Score his work a perfect six in the old scoring system, and whatever tops out in the new one.

Haylor just completed his 21st year as a head coach of the Mustangs. He's the winningest football coach in university history with 172 wins -- and he does not plan to stop anytime soon, already saying he'll be back for Year 22.

If there's one record he wouldn't mind getting an opportunity to improve on, it's his Vanier Cup record. He's been to the Vanier Cup five times and won twice. The last win came in 1994.

He developed a women's rowing team to compete with the best in the world. Al Morrow delivered a team that delivered many medals for Canada, a nation that's forever sorrowful because it cannot find greater success at the Olympics.

Morrow developed some of the greatest female rowers in the world, including Marnie McBean, Silken Laumann and Leslie Thompson-Willie. Morrow was instrumental in London becoming the training centre for the national women's team.

He's been at the helm of the Western Mustangs since 1989, leading them to 10 Ontario championships. He was selected coach of the year by the International Rowing Federation in 1999. He's in charge of the national development program on the women's side.

You know you're good when as a man, you make a women's hall of fame. Women's Athletic Alumnae at Western selected Morrow as the first male recipient of the Elfrida Berzins Award. He is the first person to be honoured by both the university's male and female sports halls of fame.

Mike Lumley never got a chance to play in baseball's major leagues. But the way he develops players, count on several of his pupils making it there. If they don't make it, at least many of his players wind up with scholarships guaranteeing them top-quality baseball competition and an education as well.

Lumley is the main man behind the London Badgers minor baseball organization. His teams have gone to the Canadian championship five times, winning once. A former AA pitcher in the Detroit Tigers' organization, Lumley has made the Badgers one of the finest minor baseball organizations in the country. Chris Robinson and Jamie Romak, graduates from the Badger organization, are in major league organizations while Adam Stern, another graduate, is playing with the Boston Red Sox.

The Motorplex opened in 1995. The combination of speed, noise and top drivers has attracted crowds of 10,000 a night to the popular beach location.

Gauss has been the general manager, coach and just about everything else for London City of the Canadian Professional Soccer League. The team has been operating for 34 years.

Father Max has helped keep the team afloat financially through the years and son Ryan was the youngest general manager in the CPSL's women's division last year.

There have been times when Gauss' frustration has led him to announce this would be his last year in soccer. Those who know Gauss realize that will only happen when he's carried out feet first.

Hobbs is tournament chair. His sons played internationally for Scotland, a team Hobbs managed. He has since been named director of sponsorship, advertising and promotion for the 2006 version of Team Canada.

Hobbs has also initiated a project that would see the proceeds from the world championship develop a parcel of land on Adelaide Street north of Windermere Road into a facility for field lacrosse. It would leave a legacy for the city.

Ada Edwards has helped put the boot to the myth that soccer is a man's game. When Edwards got involved in the game some 33 years ago, women's soccer was virtually non-existent. The game was the domain of men. A female presence was not desired and never encouraged.

Pioneers like Edwards didn't sit back and play a tight defensive game. She pushed forward on the attack and now it's the female soccer players who have generated more success nationally and internationally than the men.

She's been the president of the London and Area Women's Soccer League for the last 30 years. The league that began with six teams has grown to 35.

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