MO Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2018 announced

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by Kary Booher, Missouri Sports Hall of Fame

Mike Garrett, the 1965 Heisman Trophy winning running back who played on the Kansas City Chiefs’ two Super Bowl teams, will headline the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame’s Enshrinement Ceremonies of 2018 presented by Killian Construction, set for Sunday, January 28 in Springfield.

President & Executive Director Jerald Andrews announced Tuesday the Class of 2018, in which the Hall of Fame will induct 15 individuals, a sports broadcasting company, a high school football program and a parks and recreation department. The John Q. Hammons Founders Award will be bestowed on Springfield-based Independent Printing, while Rick Todd of the Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation will receive the President’s Award.

Festivities begin with an 11 a.m. reception presented by Meek’s The Builder’s Choice at the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, 3861 E. Stan Musial Drive in Springfield. The remainder of events will be held at the University Plaza Hotel & Convention Center in downtown Springfield, with a 4 p.m. reception followed by the 5 p.m. dinner and ceremony.

Sponsorship tables of 10 are $1,500 and include an autographed poster (a rendering by renowned artist Dayne Dudley), recognition in the printed program and at the table. Individual tickets are $150. Numerous opportunities are available, including congratulatory ads, trading cards and 20-month calendars. Call the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame at 417-889-3100.

The Class of 2018 features:

Mike Garrett, Kansas City Chiefs running back

Lee Smith, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher

Howard Richards, University of Missouri football standout

Jim Otis, St. Louis Football Cardinals & Kansas City Chiefs running back

Martin MacDonald, Conservationist & Outdoorsman

Gary Barnett, former Mizzou player and successful college football coach

Holly Hesse, Missouri State University softball coach

Doug Elgin, Commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference

Dr. Brian Mahaffey, a doctor with the St. Louis Cardinals & a former MSU baseball standout

Christian Cantwell, Eldon native & U.S. Olympic silver medalist in the shot put

Kerensa Barr Cassis, West Plains High School & Mizzou basketball standout

Dan Lucy, KOLR 10 TV Sports Director

Tony Severino, Rockhurst High School football coach

Steve Tappmeyer, a longtime basketball coach for Northwest Missouri State University

Rick Grayson, PGA teaching professional named one of the sports’ top 100 teachers

Learfield, a leading sports broadcasting company in the United States.

Lamar High School Football Program

Springfield-Greene County Park Board

Independent Printing – John Q. Hammons Founders Award

Rick Todd of Herschend Family Entertainment – President’s Award

Mike Garrett, Kansas City Chiefs Running Back: The 1965 Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Southern California and the 20th-round selection of the 1966 American Football League draft, Garrett enjoyed five productive seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs (1966-1973), helping the franchise to two Super Bowls. Garrett ranks No. 7 all-time in team history in rushing yards (3,246) and was the running back who scored the TD on coach Hank Stram’s famous “65 Power Trap” in the Super Bowl IV victory against the Minnesota Vikings. Garrett, who also played in the first ever Super Bowl, was All-AFL in 1966 and 1967 and is an inductee of the Chiefs Hall of Fame (1978) and College Football Hall of Fame (1985). He has since served in athletic director roles at Southern Cal (1993-2010), Langston University (2013-2015) and California State-Los Angeles (2015).

Lee Smith, St. Louis Cardinals Pitcher: Smith pitched 18 seasons in the big leagues from 1980 to 1997, becoming one of the game’s most feared closers with 478 career saves. That mark stood as Major League Baseball’s best until Smith was overtaken by the New York Yankees’ Mariano Rivera and the San Diego Padres’ Trevor Hoffman in the mid- to late 2000s. Smith pitched in St. Louis for four seasons from 1990 to 1993. In that stretch, he recorded 160 saves – including league-bests of 47 and 43 in his first two seasons – and held the franchise saves record until topped by Jason Isringhausen. Smith also pitched for the Cubs (1980-1987), Red Sox (1988-1990), Yankees (1993), Orioles (1994), Angels (1996), Reds (1996) and Expos (1997). He is a graduate of Castor High School in Jamestown, Louisiana and was a second-round draft pick in 1975 out of Northwestern State University in Natchitoches.

Howard Richards, University of Missouri/Dallas Cowboys Lineman: A St. Louis native and graduate of the University of Missouri, Richards was a standout offensive lineman for the Tigers from 1977 to 1980, with his final three seasons highlighted by three bowl games and 23 wins, including victories against Notre Dame and Nebraska. Richards never missed a game in his collegiate career and, beginning with the final four games of his freshman season, began a streak of 40 consecutive games as a starter at right tackle. In 1980, he also co-captained the team with eventual New Orleans Saints cornerback Johnnie Poe and was named All-Big Eight Conference. Richards was a first-round draft pick of the Dallas Cowboys in 1981 and played seven years in the NFL (six with the Cowboys, one with the Seattle Seahawks) as he helped Dallas win three NFC East Championships (1981,1982, 1985). He later enjoyed a 13-year career as a special agent with the Central Intelligence Agency (1990-2003) before moving into private real estate. Richards is now Assistant Athletic Director for Community Relations at Mizzou.

Jim Otis, St. Louis Football Cardinals & Kansas City Chiefs Running Back: A former All-American football standout at Ohio State University, Otis was a running back in the NFL for nine seasons, playing for the New Orleans Saints (1970), Kansas City Chiefs (1971-1972) and St. Louis Cardinals (1973-1978) and rushing for 4,350 yards. Otis helped the 1971 Chiefs win the AFC West and finish 10-3 after a narrow, 27-24 loss to the Miami Dolphins in the divisional round. From there, Otis headed to the eastern side of the state to join the Cardinals. There he was part of St. Louis’ 10-, 11- and 10-win playoff seasons from 1974 to 1976 under coach Don Coryell. Otis earned a Pro Bowl invitation in 1975. All this came after Otis played fullback for Ohio State from 1967 to 1969, earning First Team All-American as a senior, when he also finished seventh in voting for the Heisman Trophy.

Martin MacDonald, Conservationist & Outdoorsman: MacDonald serves as Director of Conservation of Bass Pro Shops. He coordinates Bass Pro Shops conservation programs including overseeing its three key pillars of protecting wildlife and habitat, connecting new audiences to the outdoors and advocating for sportsman’s rights. MacDonald helped found and serves on the board of the James River Basin Partnership and is a board member of Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium. He works with the National Association of Fish and Wildlife agencies on conservation and is active with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, participating in the Team ‘N Training program and has competed in eight marathons, raising money for leukemia. MacDonald is a founding member of the Upper White River Basin Foundation. In 2016, he received recognition from the National Association of State Park Directors for his deep commitment to promoting the outdoors in his two decades-plus working with Bass Pro founder Johnny Morris. An avid runner, Martin is Chairman of the Bass Pro Shops Fitness Series and founded Outdoor Days, promoting health and wellness, outdoor adventures, and wildlife conservation in the beauty of the Ozarks. Proceeds from fitness series benefit local community organizations.

Gary Barnett, Northwestern University & University of Colorado Football Coach: A 1964 graduate of Parkway Central High School in Chesterfield and a former standout wide receiver for the University of Missouri, Barnett was a successful college football coach at Northwestern University and then the University of Colorado. His 1995 Northwestern team won the Big Ten Conference outright and earned the program’s first bowl game berth (Rose Bowl) in 47 years and followed that season with a co-Big Ten Conference championship and Citrus Bowl invite. At Colorado, he was an assistant on the 1991 national championship team and then as head coach was 42-33, winning a Big 12 Conference title (2001) and four Big 12 North Division crowns (2001-2005) on teams that advanced to bowl games. He also was National Coach of the Year in 1995 and was a four-time Coach of the Year as selected by the Associated Press (1995, 1996, 2001, 2004). Barnett, who began his coaching career with 11 seasons at Air Academy High School in Colorado Springs, is now an analyst on Colorado football broadcasts.

Holly Hesse, Missouri State University Softball Coach: Hesse, who in 2018 will begin her 30th season as Missouri State University’s softball coach, is the second-winningest coach in Missouri Valley Conference history and the winningest coach in MSU softball history. Her record stands at 749-747-2 and includes two regular-season Valley championships, five Valley tournament championships and five NCAA Tournament appearances. Her Bears teams lead all Valley schools with 72 wins in the Valley tournament. A graduate of Waukon (Iowa) High School and Creighton University, Hesse has coached 33 First Team All-Conference players and nine Missouri State Athletics Hall of Fame inductees. In 2016, the Missouri State University Board of Governors honored Hesse with the Staff Excellence in Public Affairs Award for her work and accomplishments in support of MSU’s public affairs mission.

Doug Elgin, Missouri Valley Conference Commissioner: Elgin is in his 30th year with the Missouri Valley Conference and is its longest-serving commissioner in its 111-year history. In the 1990s, he oversaw the league’s realignment and stabilization in Valley membership and also brought women’s sports programs under the conference’s umbrella. Elgin also established St. Louis as the long-term site for the Valley men’s basketball tournament, which in 2018 will mark its 28th year there. In the early 2000s, he led Valley men’s basketball in securing multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament, including four in 2006. Under his leadership, the Valley also has hosted 12 NCAA basketball events in St. Louis since 1998, including a men’s Final Four in 2005 and women’s Final Fours in 2001 and 2009. He previously worked for Frostburg State University, Miami-Dade Community College South, Lafayette College and the University of Virginia as well as the Sun Belt Conference. A native of Hagerstown, Maryland, he is a 1973 graduate of Lafayette College and has a master’s from Ohio University.

Dr. Brian Mahaffey, Missouri State University Baseball & Sports Medicine: Mahaffey is now Medical Director of Mercy Sports Medicine, having earned his doctorate at the University of Missouri. He was the Head Physician for Missouri State Athletics for 16 years. With the St. Louis Cardinals, he was franchise’s Minor League Liaison for 10 years while overseeing the club’s Double-A Springfield affiliate and, since 2013, has been a member of the big-league Cardinals’ medical staff. Mahaffey was a four-year standout for the Missouri State baseball team (1985-1988), playing for four Mid-Continent Conference championship teams and the 1987 NCAA Tournament team. He was a three-time First Team All-Conference selection and the 1998 Mid-Continent Player of the Year as he held seven program career records, including home runs (42) and RBI (175), and ranked second in seven other categories. He was inducted into the Missouri State University Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005 and the inaugural class of the MSU Athletic Academic Hall of Fame in 2014.

Christian Cantwell, Eldon High School/University of Missouri/U.S. Olympian: A 1999 Eldon High School graduate who went on to the University of Missouri, Cantwell is a world champion shot putter. He won a silver medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and finished fourth at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. In other international competition, Cantwell also won a gold at the 2009 World Outdoor Championships and is a three-time World Indoor champion. Additionally, he has won seven championships (four in outdoor, three in indoor) in the USA Track & Field Championships. Previously, Cantwell was a seven-time NCAA All-American at Mizzou and a five-time winner of the Big 12 Championships, winning four shot put titles and one weight throw championship. He also holds school records in the indoor and outdoor shot put.

Kerensa Barr Cassis, West Plains High School & University of Missouri Basketball: Cassis was Miss Show-Me Basketball in 1999 for West Plains High School, a year after helping the program win the Class 4 state championship and finish 29-3. She then went on to star for the Mizzou women’s basketball team, becoming a three-year captain, including in 2001 when the team reached the Sweet 16, and later was voted to the All-Decade Team. At the time of her graduation, Cassis held program career records in assists (489) and free-throw percentage (.812), and is elsewhere in the record books, having scored more than 1,000 points. She also was a member of the Big 12 All-Star European Tour and was invited to the 2001 USA Basketball tryouts. Cassis was a Sporting News/March of Dimes Socrates Award national finalist and a Women’s Basketball Student-Athlete of the Year semifinalist. After stints as a assistant D-I coach, she is an attorney at law at Shook Hardy & Bacon in Kansas City.

Dan Lucy, KOLR 10 TV Sports Director: Lucy will mark his 34th year in sports broadcasting in 2018 – all in Missouri. He spent his first four years at KOMU TV in Columbia and, since 1988, has worked at KOLR 10 TV in Springfield, including the past 25 years as its Sports Director. Lucy has been a part of the Missouri State University TV broadcast crew, hosted the MSU football and basketball coaches shows for years and is a correspondent for the Missouri Valley Conference. The son of a U.S. Army colonel, Lucy is a 1981 graduate of Omaha, Nebraska’s Millard South High School and a 1985 graduate of the University of Missouri. He has covered eight World Series, a Super Bowl, a PGA Championship, two Major League Baseball All-Star Games, an NHL All-Star Game as well as NCAA basketball tournaments. Lucy, who overcame prostate cancer in 2014, has been the emcee for the Boys and Girls Club Steak & Steak dinner for more than 20 years.

Tony Severino, Rockhurst High School Football Coach: The 2017 season marked Severino’s 48th coaching high school football and his 41st as head coach. He owns an overall record of 370-106-1 (fourth-best in the state) and eight state championships. He has spent 35 of those seasons at Rockhurst High School, where he is 326-85-1 and his teams have won seven state championships (1983, 1986, 1987, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2010). With a 1982 state championship at Shawnee Mission Northwest in Kansas, Severino is the only coach to win state football titles in both states. Overall, his teams have made 35 playoff appearances in the past 38 years, played in 13 state championship games and 19 state semifinals. Fourteen of his players went on to play pro football. A native of Cleveland, Ohio and graduate of Kansas State University, Severino is a seven-time Missouri Coach of the Year and the 2000 USA Today National Coach of the Year.

Steve Tappmeyer, Northwest Missouri State University Basketball Coach: Tappmeyer is one of the winningest men’s basketball coaches in NCAA Division II, coaching from 1988 to 2013 with a record of 460-238 (.659). In 21 seasons at Northwest Missouri State, Tappmeyer is the program’s all-time leader with 408 wins. Along the way, his teams reached 10 NCAA Tournaments, with two appearances in the Elite Eight (2002, 2004). The Bearcats also won seven Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAA) championships. They also had a stretch of 11 consecutive seasons with 19 or more wins, and his teams surpassed 22 wins in nine of his final 12 campaigns. Tappmeyer was a four-time MIAA Coach of the Year and the 2001 South Central Region Coach of the Year. Tappmeyer later coached three seasons at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, finishing 52-29. He grew up in Gerald and attended East Central Junior College before graduating from Southeast Missouri State.

Rick Grayson, PGA Professional: Grayson has been part of Springfield’s golf scene since 1976, including 30 years as a Professional Golf Association (PGA) head professional. He has worked the past 17 years at Rivercut Golf Course following a combined 12 years at Bill & Payne Stewart Golf Course and eight years at Tri-Way Golf Course in Republic. Grayson has been a Golf Magazine Top 100 instructor the past 20 years as well as the Midwest Section’s PGA Professional of the Year in 2005, its Teacher of the Year five times and Junior Golf Leader four times. He has written golf articles for Sports Illustrated, USA Today, PGA Magazine, Senior Golf and Golf Magazine, plus co-authored “Super Golf.” He also was the swing coach for actor Lucas Black for the movie “Seven Days in Utopia” and was the lead instructor at the PGA Junior Ryder Cup. The Connie Morris Golf Learning Center at Springfield’s Rivercut Golf Course is home of the Rick Grayson Golf School. Grayson is a 1972 graduate of Pryor, Oklahoma and 1976 graduate of Park University.

Learfield: Launched in 1972 by Clyde Lear and Derry Brownfield under the name Missouri Network, Inc., Learfield has grown to become one of the most successful sports marketing companies in the country. Learfield has been the radio rights distributor for the University of Missouri Athletics since 1975. It now employs 1,300 nationwide as a diverse media enterprise anchored by its core collegiate business managing multimedia rights and sponsorship initiatives for nearly 130 institutions, conferences and arenas. The company has grown dramatically over the past few years, adding capabilities in licensing, branding, ticketing platforms, stadium video displays, food and beverage hospitality and digital marketing.

Lamar High School Football Program: Led by coach Scott Bailey, the Lamar Tigers have surged to become one of the premier high school football programs in the state. In 2017, the Tigers accomplished something no other program in the state had achieved – a seventh consecutive state championship as they won yet again in Class 2. It’s a stretch that has seen Lamar compile an incredible record of 98-5, including a 43-0 mark over the past three seasons. A 1985 Lamar High School graduate who played at nearby Pittsburg State University, Bailey re-built the program and led it to numerous successes since arriving in 2006. Previously, Lamar football was 37 games under .500 but is 129-36 overall since. In the state championship run, Lamar has had 52 players earn All-State. It also has three teams conference championships, including 2015, the program’s first since 1932.

Springfield-Greene County Park Board: The nationally-recognized and award-winning Park Board will celebrate its 105th year in 2018. It combined Springfield and Greene County parks in 1996, and is responsible for 104 park sites, with 2.9 million users annually, and hosts 50 national, regional and state events a year that generate $15 million into the local economy. Among its many facilities is Cooper Park, home to the Killian Softball Complex, Lake Country Soccer Fields, youth baseball facilities and the 26-court Cooper Tennis Complex. The tennis facility features 2,500-seat Mediacom Stadium, home to a professional World TeamTennis franchise – the only one in the U.S. operated by a public parks system. The Park Board is an affiliate of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Community Olympic Development Program. It also is one of only 155 park boards nationally to receive accreditation through the Committee for Accreditation of Park and Recreation Agencies. Two of its former directors – Dan Kinney and Jodie Adams – are Missouri Sports Hall of Fame inductees.

Independent Printing, Inc. – Founder’s Award: The John Q. Hammons Founder’s Award is presented to a company that supports the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. Independent Printing, Inc. is a Springfield company established in 1945 and was one of the first corporate sponsors of the Hall of Fame, dating back 20 years. Wally Hemingway took the helm in 1971 and set the standard for printing excellence in the Ozarks. Now led by Jason Hemingway, Independent Printing, Inc. supports the Hall of Fame numerous in ways by participating in Celebrity Golf Classics as well as by publishing the Hall of Famer magazine, Enshrinement and luncheon programs and attending numerous functions. Independent Printing also supports the PGA Web.com Tour’s Price Cutter Charity Championship presented by Dr Pepper, which has gifted nearly $14.7 million to Ozarks children’s charities since 1990.

Rick Todd – President’s Award: The President’s Award is bestowed on an individual who champions sports in the state and especially supports the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. Todd in 2017 marked his 50th year working for the Herschend Family Entertainment Corp., which owns Silver Dollar City. He has risen from summer parking attendant to Senior Vice President of Enterprise Risk Management and Business Administration. His leadership can be found overseeing the Silver Dollar City Foundation’s Pro-Am, a key part of the PGA Web.com Tour’s Price Cutter Charity Championship presented by Dr. Pepper, which has gifted almost $14.7 million to children’s charities. The SDC Pro-Am was the first off-site pro-am on the Web.com Tour. A 1969 graduate of Reeds Spring High School, Todd also is a longtime supporter and contributor to MS 150 and has served numerous years as a youth sports coach and 18 years as an honorary coach and host for teams in the NAIA Division II Tournament. Todd is Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for Cox Medical Center Branson and a board member of Central Bank of Branson.

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