Long-time Lakehead men’s basketball coach Lou Pero will headline Lakehead University’s 2015 sports-wall-of-fame inductee class.
Pero, currently an assistant coach for the women’s team under Jon Kreiner, will be joined in the building category by wrestling coach Francis Clayton.
Skier Rena Viehbeck, who helped the Thunderwolves capture five national Nordic titles, and basketball’s Lynn Black are the female athlete inductees. Basketball’s Don Holmstrom and wrester Mike Thomas are the male athlete inductees.
Also going onto the wall of fame is the 2005-06 Pete Belliveau-led men’s hockey team, who fell 3-2 to Alberta in the CIS championship final.
Pero began his career in the late 1960s at Lakehead and servied at the mens' coach from 1989 to 2003, when Scott Morrison took over the reins.
Clayton first came to prominence in 1980, winning national gold as a rookie in the 68-kilogram division. the took over the wrestling team's coaching duties in 1985, a job he held for 20 years and has since retaken over in an interim capacity.
Viebeck, then known as Rena Bode, was a two-time Lakehead Univesity female athlete of the year in 2005 and 2007, while Black, who was known as Lynn Simmer in her time at Lakehehead, starred on the women's basketball team from 1970 to 1974 and the Terrace Bay native is currently 35th on the team's all-time scoring list.
Holstrom was the first LU basketball player to crack the 1,000-point mark, a graduate of the now-closed Fort William Collegiate Institute and the school's male athlete of the year in 1967-68. Thomas won national gold in 1997 and was named the country's most outstanding male wrestler. Over his career he collected two OUA gold medals, a pair of silvers, one national title and two national runner-up finishes. He went on to represent the country at the Pan-American Games.
The 2005-06 hockey team, who won the Queen's Cup, was led on the ice by homegrown talent Joel Scherban and Kenora's Jeff Richards, goalie Chris Whitley and a supporting cast that included the likes of Erik Lodge, Mike Jacobsen, Murray Magill and Shandor Alphonso, who has gone on to a career as an NHL linesman.
