Inducting the class of ’25

The Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame will induct its class of 2025 on Thursday, Nov. 6 at the Victoria Inn in Winnipeg. Two athletes, two builders, one athlete/builder and one team representing football, softball, volleyball, soccer, multi-sport and sport medicine make up the class.

Record-setting Winnipeg Blue Bomber Troy Westwood is the football inductee. The kicker, who was born in Dauphin and grew up in Winnipeg, played 18 seasons in the CFL. He became the team’s all-time leading scorer with 2,741 points and holds multiple Bomber and CFL kicking records. Westwood was twice nominated as the CFL’s outstanding Canadian player, and was inducted into the Winnipeg Football Club Hall of Fame in 2011. He also writes a column on unsung young sports heroes every other week in the Free Press Community Review.

Softball is represented by pitcher Ashley Lanz, who began her softball journey in Winnipeg at age six. She pitched for Minot State and Simon Fraser universities from 2003 to 2005, earning NAIA All-American and pitcher of the year honours in 2005. She also made her mark in international competition, playing for Canada’s national team from 2005 to 2012, winning gold at the 2007 FISU (International University Sports Federation) championships in Bangkok, Thailand. Lanz also pitched in the Netherlands, Czech Republic and in the Italian Professional League. At the Canadian championships, playing with Manitoba’s formidable Smitty’s club, she was named top pitcher in 2008 and 2009. Lanz was inducted into the Manitoba Softball HOF in 2018.

Russ Paddock, who was born in Oak River, is being recognized for his success on the volleyball court and for his coaching resumé. He played for Canada at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona and was the captain of the national team in the 1994 world championships. Paddock (whose older brother John was general manager and coach of the Winnipeg Jets in the 1990s) coached the men’s volleyball team at Brandon University from 2005-2012. The team won Canada West silver and CIS (now USports) bronze in 2009 and silver in both in 2011. He was inducted into the Volleyball Manitoba HOF in 2007 as an athlete-builder.

Selected as a builder in sports medicine for his career, which spans four decades of athletic therapy, Glen Bergeron served on Canadian medical teams at five Olympic Games and was the chief therapist for both the FISU and Pan Am Games.

The team being honoured, Lucania Football Club, won the Canadian National Challenge Cup championship in 1987. Lucania beat New Westminster Queens Park Rangers 1-0 in the final played in Winnipeg. Kevin Methot scored the only goal. It was the first championship for a Manitoba team since 1970, when the Manitoba Selects won. Lucania was inducted into the provincial soccer hall in 2020.

Gary Solar is being inducted as a builder, an honour that is long overdue, in the opinion of this columnist. The biography prepared by Sport Manitoba only provides an overview of Solar’s involvement in sport in our province and beyond. Solar came from water polo, where he was president of the Manitoba league and then vice-president of the Canadian Water Polo Association in 1963-64. He moved into the larger sporting community with the Manitoba Sports Federation, where he served as chairman in 1975-76 and co-authored the master plan for sport development called MASPORT. Solar was also a director of the Sports Federation of Canada and secretary-general of the Sports Confederation of America.

My first contact with Solar came when I was appointed a director of the Manitoba Sports Federation in 1976 and served on the MASPORT committee. Since then, you can imagine the number of volunteers with whom I have worked or crossed paths with through my involvement in several different sports and their halls of fame, through my freelance reporting, or through the more than two decades I served on the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame independent selection committee. Gary Solar belongs right near the top of any list of Manitoba’s sports leaders.