BUTLER TWP Dan Cunningham was elected president of the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame.

Cunningham, a longtime baseball umpire and manager of the Saxonburg Eagle County League team since 1995, also is Eagle County League president and a member of the Pennsylvania American Legion Baseball Hall of Fame.

He succeeds Ed Wadding.

“I'm thrilled to be in this position and look forward to helping with the continuing growth of this organization,” Cunningham said.

The Butler County Sports Hall of Fame began with a testimonial dinner for then major league umpire and Butler resident Ed Vargo in 1966. The Hall's 46th annual induction banquet will be April 30 at the Butler Days Inn.

Cunningham said he has two major objectives for the coming year.

“We need to attain some board-of-director representation from the Zelienople and Slippery Rock areas,” he said. “Those are the parts of the county we seem to be lacking contacts.

“This is a countywide organization and we want everybody to be represented.”

The Hall of Fame has 22 members on its board of directors, including long-term members Guy Travaglio, Art Bernardi and Jim Lokhaiser.

Lokhaiser has served as master of ceremonies for all but one of the organization's induction banquets.

The Hall houses 331 inductees, two lifetime achievement awardees (Lokhaiser and Merril Moses) and one team recognition award. Butler's undefeated football team of 1950 received that distinction last year.

“That's the other area I want to hit hard: the team recognition honor,” Cunningham said. “We want as many teams from different sports in the county high school, sandlot or otherwise to be nominated.”

Other elected officers this year are Tim McCune as vice president, Dave Johnston as secretary and Jim Lokhaiser Jr. as treasurer.

Johnston replaces Cunningham, who served as secretary last year.

Applications for individual or team HOF nomination are available at the Hall's website, www.bcshof.com.

“We've got a talented group of board members and our meetings are productive,” Cunningham said. “Now we want to move forward with technology and get as many people involved and/or nominated as we can.”