SYRACUSE — The Central New York Sales & Marketing Executives (CNYSME) has selected Howard Dolgon, owner, president, CEO and team governor of the Syracuse Crunch, as the winner of the 2014 Crystal Ball Award.

The organization annually bestows the award to a local businessperson who has contributed to the sales and marketing profession and has worked in community development and support.

“It’s really an honor,” says Dolgon, adding he “had no idea” CNYSME was considering him for the award.

CNYSME will present Dolgon with the Crystal Ball Award on April 10 at the 38th annual Crystal Ball and Sales & Marketing Excellence Awards (SMEA) ceremony at the Holiday Inn Syracuse-Liverpool on Electronics Parkway in Salina.

Dolgon will join a list of past Crystal Ball winners that he calls “impressive,” a group that includes the 2013 recipient, Peter Belyea, president of CXtec and Teracai. Other winners include Debbie Sydow, former president of Onondaga Community College in 2012; John Stage, founder and CEO of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in 2011; Peter Coleman, the publican of Coleman’s Authentic Irish Pub in 2010; and Edward (Ed) Levine, president and CEO of Galaxy Communications, LLC in Syracuse in 2009, according to the CNYSME website.

“A lot of people who’ve done a lot of good work in the community,” Dolgon says of the past honorees.

Prior to his ownership of the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League (AHL), Dolgon was a founding member of Alan Taylor Communications, Inc., an independent sports public-relations agency, which has since rebranded to Taylor, according to its website.

Dolgon joined Onondaga County officials to introduce the Syracuse Crunch to the community in May 1994.

When asked if marketing efforts are that much more important for a minor-league hockey organization than one in the big leagues, Dolgon had a simple response.

“It is significantly more important,” he says.

Teams in professional sports leagues at the highest level, including the National Hockey League and the National Football League, get “great national support just from their branding alone” as major sports leagues.

Combine their branding with national media exposure and television contracts, and it’s an advantage a minor-league team just doesn’t have, Dolgon says.

Therefore, he adds, it becomes “much more critical” for a minor-league sports team to really become part of the fabric of the community.

“It’s probably much more important that you have a marketing plan in place, business plan in place that is heavy on the marketing and [public relations] and promotion if you have any chance of being successful in the community,” Dolgon says.

In addition to the local focus on hockey, the Syracuse AHL affiliate also includes an organization that works to benefit the community.

The Crunch Foundation, the charitable arm of the Syracuse Crunch, strives to strengthen and broaden the impact of the Syracuse Crunch in the Central New York by providing support and funds to non-profit groups, educational programs and community initiatives, according to the team’s website.

For example, the team and the Crunch Foundation will continue to support the Hillside Family of Agencies with programs that bring awareness and monetary support throughout the 2013-14 season, according to a news release on the website.

Before his ownership the Syracuse Crunch and in his work with the Taylor firm, Dolgon had created and implemented numerous award-winning programs for a variety of corporations including Purchase, N.Y. –based MasterCard International (NYSE: MA); Minneapolis–based General Mills, Inc. (NYSE: GIS); and London–based Diageo plc (NYSE: DEO), an alcoholic-beverage company, in their sports endeavors.

Dolgon acknowledges it’s a cliché, but he believes the CNYSME wouldn’t consider him for the award if he didn’t have “the kind of staff he has” in Syracuse.

Besides Dolgon, Vance Lederman, the team’s CFO and senior vice president of business operations and Jim Sorosy, the team’s COO, lead a staff of about 25 people, including Julien BrisBois, the team’s general manager and Crunch head coach Rob Zettler.

Lederman has worked for the Crunch for 20 years, while Sarosy has been with the organization for 19 years, Dolgon says.

“We’ve been fortunate in not only hiring the right people, but keeping the right people, and that’s something that really doesn’t happen a lot in minor-league sports” he says.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com