On May 3, 2021, the Board of the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame announced its Class of 2021. Among the four inductees is former BC Games Society CEO and honourary Board Member, Roger Skillings.
Roger held his post as CEO of the BC Games from 1988 until the spring of 1999. During his tenure, he developed a model for sport hosting excellence which endures to this day. He fine tuned the community legacy policy, ensuring every BC Winter or BC Summer Games saw a return on their Games hosting – translating into wide-spread benefit that is seen and felt in past-host communities to this day. He also expanded the Society’s delivery of professional services to the BC Senior Games, Northern BC Games and BC Games for the Physically Disabled.
Beyond the BC Games, Roger’s visionary thinking helped build Victoria into an Olympic training hub as President and CEO of the Commonwealth Centre for Sport Development, which became PacificSport, and later the CEO of Canadian Sport Centre Pacific.
While successful athletes and coaches are rewarded with medals and headlines, Roger Skillings was quite happy to go about his work anonymously, humbly building the framework of BC Winter and BC Summer Games on which those athletes and coaches would build. He remains on the BC Games Society Board of Director as an Honourary Board Member.
Roger will enter the builders’ category alongside Peter Lawless, who has coached athletes to 28 world records and 17 Paralympic and World Championship medals. Matt Pettinger and Gwen Spencer Hethey receive hall of fame honours as athletes for their long and illustrious careers in hockey and shooting, respectively.
Congratulations to Roger and all of the 2021 inductees!
Photo credit: Goldstream News Gazette