Sports Hall of Fame aims to expand membership

May 12, 2022 · 0 Comments

The Aurora Sports Hall of Fame has amended their General Bylaw with the hopes of increasing membership.

The announcement, which came at the organization’s Annual General Meeting, is an outreach to the local community that anybody can now register for a membership with the Hall of Fame at no charge.

“We found in the past that we’ve been quite restricted with what we can do and what we’re able to do within our organization and community because our members right now, in terms of our bylaw, are really just the people around the boardroom table. Those are our members,” said President and Chair of the Hall of Fame Javed Khan.

“We’ve regrouped as an organization and as a Board, that we’ve got a very small net that we can capture. We would like to increase the net, so we can capture more opportunities for nominations, volunteers and possible revenue opportunities, [and] attendees to our events including the induction celebration evening. We took that to a vote at our Board and it was approved.”

The Aurora Sports Hall of Fame, which began under the Strategic Plan development under Sport Aurora in 2011, came into inception in 2013 thanks to a $192,500.00 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Since its inception, the Hall of Fame has recognized people who have resided in Aurora or who were originally from the Town, who have contributed to sports and have made significant impacts in the community.

With 38 honoured members in the hall right now, the Hall of Fame is seeking a method to get the community more involved and the membership involvement is not strictly limited to sports organizations.

“Why not make every single sport organization in the community and other related organizations our members for free? Because there is no better resource for determining historical sports figures to Aurora, than going right through the membership themselves,” said Non-Voting Officer Gerry Miller.

“Whenever we had an event, such as the Stanley Cup coming to Aurora and we partnered with the Town, we needed to be able to go through all those organizations and this permits that. It’s our next step in our evolution to become a true widespread community organization, like other organizations in the Town are.”

If you are interested in becoming a member of the Hall of Fame, you may contact Khan directly to learn more. He may be reached at president@aurorashof.ca.

By Robert Belardi