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Billington, Coulter Amongst Those Named To London Sports Hall of Fame

Today at a press conference at Budweiser Gardens, the London Sports Hall of Fame named their 2018 inductees. National Hockey League goaltender Craig Billington, Canadian Olympic volleyball player Al Coulter, para-Olympic and world championship swimmer Adam Purdy, and soccer player and builder Tom Partalas will all be inducted this year, along with the Oakridge Secondary School boys hockey teams from the early 1970s.

Billington was an NHL goalie for 15 years. The London native went to Northridge elementary school and A. B. Lucas secondary school and was a product of the Stoneybrook Minor Hockey Association. He played in the shadow of arguably the greatest goaltender of all-time, backing up Martin Brodeur in New Jersey, but he also spent time with the Ottawa Senators, Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche, and Washington Capitals.

“Billy” also ran a successful goaltending school in London and Gravenhurst, Ontario for more than 20 years. After being drafted by the Devils in 1984, Billington would still come back to London in the offseason, and run Pete’s Goalie School. He would bring in a couple of NHL goalies like Pat Riggin, and Greg Stefan, as well as OHL goalies, CIAU goalies, and even a young Jeff Hackett when he was still playing for Lucas in high school. Billington used local hockey players as “puck boys” to shoot at all of the young goaltending students. Puck boys got to hang out in the dressing room at Argyle Arena with NHL players and talk like they talk. It was an amazing youth experience for many London boys, and a great goaltending school for any of the students fortunate enough to attend..

Billington joined the Colorado Avalanche’s front office staff following his retirement as a player in 2003, where he is currently the teams’s assistant general manager responsible for player development and minor league operations. While he has not had ties to the London community for quite some time, it is likely that impact on young Londoners that had a lot to do with his induction today.

Allan Coulter had the longest competitive volleyball career ever for a Canadian. In 1979, he joined the men’s national volleyball team based in Calgary, and competed for Team Canada until 1992. He represented Canada at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Coulter didn’t even take up volleyball until high school as a student at Banting Secondary School, where he led them to back-to-back city championships.

He joined the Canadian national junior team while still at Banting, before moving on to Western University where he led the unranked Mustangs to the Ontario University Athletics championship as a rookie. He left Western the following year to play for the national team, where he would spend the next thirteen years.

He was captain of Team Canada for four years, and he holds the world record for the most international matches played by a national volleyball athlete. On top of the two Olympic Games, Al played in two World Championships, two Pan American Games, three World University Games, and seven NORCECA Championships. He won six Canadian National Volleyball Championships and one US Open National Championship, as well as winning the 1998 World Masters Volleyball Championships for both Indoor and Outdoor volleyball.

Al has publicly estimated his unofficial match tally to be over 735.

Inductee Adam Purdy represented Team Canada at the IPC World Championships in 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006, as well as the Paralympic Games in 1996, 2000 and 2004. He was born in London in 1981, with a congenital condition call arthrogryposis – congenital joint contracture in two or more areas of the body. Purdy had two club feet and had both his ankles and elbows fused. It was his time in hydrotherapy rehabilitation programs at the Thames Valley Children’s Centre that first piqued his love for the water.

In Sydney in 2000, he won gold in the 100-m backstroke (in world record time) and in the 4X100-m medley relay.

The two-time Paralympic gold medallist returned to the para-swimming national scene in 2014 after a seven-year absence, and incredibly earned a spot on the Canadian team for the 2014 Pan Pacific Para-swimming Championships, where he won a silver in the 100-m backstroke. He also set Canadian records in the 50-m butterfly and 4×50-m medley relay.

Purdy is just the second para-athlete to be inducted into the London Sports Hall of Fame’s since its first induction in 2002.

2018 inductee Tom Partalas, was a London soccer player and a great builder of the sport here in London. Though he was born in Greece, he moved to Canada in 1967, and played professionally for London from 1969 to 1970. He attended South secondary school and was a soccer all-star at Western University, before playing for London City. After that, Partalas and John Henderson organized the first youth competitive league in London in 1971. Some 45-plus years later, he is still an instructor and assessor with OSA.

As president and CEO of the London Optimist Sports Centre, he led the building of the $14.5 million BMO Centre, which opened in 2011.

He has won countless awards including the Pillar Community Award, and the 2012 Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Rounding out the 2018 inductees, are the Oakridge Oaks 1971-1973 hockey teams. Those teams won the Ontario Federation of Secondary Schools Association (OFFSA) boys championship an unprecedented – and never repeated — three times in a row. Head coach Fred Israels was overwhelmed to be honoured to such a degree, but said that he thought that those winning teams put, “high school hockey on the London map.”

“Before that, it was hardly noticed, and then that grew until you have fans at Thompson arena of 3,000 or more,” Israels said. “I think we started that process.”

Israels said that he and the members have kept in touch, holding reunions over the years.

All of the 2018 inductees will be officially inducted into the Hall of Fame at a ceremony on November 8th.

About Mark Solway

Storyteller. Community builder, content creator, sports journalist, and a proud Londoner for 40 years.

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