On March 24 and 25, the Pepsi Center will be the site of the 2007 NCAA Men's Ice Hockey Western Regional. The event is hosted by the Metro Denver Sports Commission and the University of Denver and is a prelude to the NCAA Frozen Four, college hockey's national championship, which will be held in St. Louis two weeks after the regional. It's also a warm-up for next year, when the national championships will be held in Denver.

As veteran business observers are aware, events like these are more than just sports activities. They're opportunities to showcase Denver and Colorado to a national audience and frame this region in a very favorable light.

They also represent the culmination of lots of hard work, strategic planning and community cooperation - almost five years of it in this case.

At the heart of these efforts is the Metro Denver Sports Commission. It began the bid process for the 2007 NCAA Western Hockey Regional and 2008 NCAA Frozen Four in 2002 and was awarded the games in 2003.

The Metro Denver Sports Commission was founded in 2001 by Rob Cohen, president of IMA Financial and a visionary civic booster ever since he moved to Denver in 1989. Cohen and other local business leaders saw the opportunity to foster social and economic vitality through sports.

They were eager to showcase Denver's impressive new sports infrastructure such as Invesco Field at Mile High, the Pepsi Center, Coors Field and Magness Arena to attract amateur athletic events to the Denver area and give something back to the community by way of event-related youth programs.

They forged alliances with the Denver Chamber of Commerce, the Denver Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Downtown Denver Partnership, as well as Denver's professional sports teams, and mapped out a strategy to accomplish their vision.

A key part of this strategy was the hiring of Jon Schmieder as executive director of the MDSC in 2002. Schmieder's experience as a college basketball coach and later his work for the Tulsa Sports Commission and as executive director of Pop Warner Football in Philadelphia marked him as the kind of energetic and organized executive the MDSC needed to build for the future.

Now in his fifth year with the MDSC, Schmieder looks back fondly on those early days. "It was originally the board, me, a phone and the start of a vision. Today we have 100 corporate partners, seven full-time staffers and 300 community volunteers. We also have 45 dedicated board members who juggle their personal and professional responsibilities while giving us outstanding support and guidance."

Part of that guidance is direction on how to keep up the MDSC's momentum as it moves forward. "We evaluate 30 to 50 events on an ongoing basis," Schmieder said. "Our goal is to snare at least one national caliber event every year, and we'll have two in '08-the Frozen Four and the NCAA Men's College Basketball Tournament.

"We're also bidding on events from 2009 to 2015, including the world rugby sevens, the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, the NCAA Women's Final Four and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Championships."

But for the moment, the MDSC's focus is on the Western Regional. "It will be the first time a host city will have the regional and Frozen Four in the same venue," Schmieder said. "They'll be the first college hockey games played in the Pepsi Center, and 2008 will also mark the first college hockey national championships in Denver since 1976, when they were held in the old DU Arena."

The Bonham line: Our community has a tradition of supporting major amateur sports events, and this one certainly fits that mold. Tickets for the 2007 NCAA West Regional can be purchased at the Pepsi Center Box Office, online at ticketmaster.com or pepsicenter.com, and by phone at 303-830-8497. For information on the MDSC, its many worthwhile initiatives and on corporate packages that include next year's Frozen Four, go to denversports.org.

Dean Bonham is CEO and Don Hinchey is VP of Communications for The Bonham Group, a Denver-based sports and entertainment marketing firm. Send your comments to dhinchey@bonham.com.