2010 BELLEVILLE SPORTS HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

  • Robert Remi “Bobby” Crawford

    ATHLETE, HOCKEY

  • Dave Mills

    BUILDER, GOLF

  • Franklin Jacob “Frank” Zielski

    ATHLETE, ROWING

ROBERT REMI “BOBBY” CRAWFORD

ATHLETE, HOCKEY

One of three of Belleville’s Crawford brothers to play in the NHL (Marc and Louis were the others), Bobby Crawford was the most prolific of the clan, enjoying a 36- goal, 61-point season with the Hartford Whalers (now Carolina Hurricanes) while playing 80 games in the 1983-84 campaign.

Unfortunately it was Crawford’s only full season in the NHL. Hampered by injuries, he later played for the New York Rangers and Washington Capitals before finishing his professional playing career in Germany where he scored 92 goals over two seasons for Krefeld EV.

Overall, starting with the St. Louis Blues, in 246 career NHL games over eight seasons, Crawford had 71 goals and 71 assists for 142 points.

In major junior, Crawford was an offensive force for three seasons with the Cornwall Royals from 1976-79, increasing his goal total each year from 36 to 54 to 62 along with point totals of 70, 121 and 132. Crawford was selected by the Blues in the fourth round, 65th overall, of the 1979 MIL draft and went on to score 54 goals along with 45 assists for 99 points for the Central Hockey League’s Salt Lake City Golden Eagles in 1981-82, winning the CHL’s MVP honours. In three seasons at Salt Lake City, Crawford led the Golden Eagles to a pair of league championships. Since retiring as a player, Crawford has been no less successful as a businessman — operating rinks in Connecticut — a youth hockey administrator and coach. He was the Atlantic Junior Hockey League coach of the year in 2004 and guided a U.S. U18 select side to a bronze medal in 2006 at an international tournament in Canada. More than 100 players from Crawford’s Connecticut Clippers/Hartford Junior Wolfpack organization have gone on to earn U.S. Division 1, 2 or 3 hockey scholarships. Crawford’s teams have won multiple championships and developed into one of the most outstanding junior hockey programs in the U.S. Crawford has also been a key figure on the board of directors for USA Hockey’s East Coast region. Crawford was born in Belleville on April 6,-1959, the same year his father, Floyd, captained the city’s famous McFarland’s Sr. A hockey team to a world championship title in Prague.

DAVE MILLS

BUILDER, GOLF

More than one hundred athletes who have graduated from Junior Golf Programs in Ontario to receive Golf Scholarships in the United States – and some to professional tours – owe some of their good fortune to David Mills. The Executive Director of the Golf Association of Ontario (GAO) since 1997, Mills has been instrumental in developing Junior Golf Programs in Belleville and across the province. To date, the GAO Scholarship Program, instituted by Mills, has awarded more than $290,000 to more than 180 students.

Mills developed a program specifically designed to educate young men and women – and their parents – on how to pursue and land U.S. golf scholarships. He has spearheaded the introduction or growth of numerous grassroots developmental golf programs at the regional and provincial levels – including a Golf in Schools program which reaches more than 200 new schools annually, and CN Future Links which introduces youth to the game of golf.

Mills worked to secure “Official Sport” status for golf by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Sport Promotion and Sport Canada, and facilitated changes to include golf as a provincially funded sport.

Mills was a Non-Playing Captain with the Ontario Junior Boys Team from 1991-1996, including the National Championship Teams of 1994, 1995; initiated and led the process to establish the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame at Wooden Sticks in 2001; and as a Nationally Certified Rules Official served on the Rules Committee for the Canadian Open, Canadian Men’s Amateur Championship, numerous Provincial Championships and the Telus Skins Game.

Living in Belleville from 1985-98, Mills founded the Bay of Quinte High School Golf Championships, hosted two major Provincial Championships at the Bay of Quinte Country Club, assisted in hosting and sponsoring the first-ever Canadian Amputee Golf Championship in 1989 and established a junior golf program at the Bay of Quinte Country Club that resulted in seven graduates receiving U.S. golf scholarships.

FRANKLIN JACOB “Frank” ZIELSKI

ATHLETE, ROWING

Frank Zielski has been a pioneer in the sport of rowing as a competitor, coach and administrator. Born in 1941 and rowing out of St. Catharines, Zielski was a member of the first-ever Eastern Canadian crew to defeat the powerhouse University of British Columbia for the right to represent Canada at the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome. In preparation for that victory, his crew had initiated winter training.

Zielski’s pioneering role in that ground-breaking victory cannot be under-estimated in how it affected the future of rowing in Canada. The success of his St Catharines crew sparked the development of numerous future Olympians from the Niagara region and other parts of Ontario in a sport that had previously been dominated in Canada by B.C. rowers in the 1950s, Zielski’s crew has been honoured several times by the St. Catharines Rowing Club over the past five decades and on June 12, 2010—on the fiftieth anniversary of their Olympic appearance — the SCRC named a boat in their honour. After competing on Canada’s four-man crew at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Zielski captained the prestigious Argonaut Rowing Club in Toronto four years later.

Moving to Belleville in 1981, Zielski co-founded the Quinte Rowing Club in 1987 and coached for several years. The QRC has gone on to encourage several graduates to continue competitive and coaching careers here and abroad. Brian Price, who coxed the Canadian heavyweight men’s eight to an Olympic gold medal in Beijing in 2008, is a graduate of the QRC. Thanks to Zielski’s input — especially during the early years of the club — the QRC now boasts its own facility on Keegan Parkway, several boats, a thriving high school program and is the only club in Eastern Canada with its own indoor rowing tank The tank is named in Zielski’s honour.

Zielski’s medal collection includes United States National awards, Canadian High School championships, and numerous other rowing titles. Along with his Canadian Olympic Team honours, Zielski is the holder of a prestigious Henley Medal, one of the most cherished awards in Canadian rowing.