So what about a Lake County Athletic Hall of Fame?
I”ve discussed that very topic many times down through the years with coaches, administrators, parents, athletes and most recently with a local merchant, Bill Grossner of First Place Trophies & Awards in Lakeport, and it”s a good idea although a tremendous undertaking.
My background in this area is certainly limited, though I did serve on the committee that elected the first group of 10 athletes into the new Mendocino College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006. My hometown high school, Healdsburg, also has its own hall of fame, and I”ve asked others who have served on high school or collegiate halls of fame how they got the ball rolling, how they kept it going, and what to avoid.
The biggest piece of advice they gave me was to choose someone to head the project who has the time to do it, especially in the beginning when there is no blueprint to follow. We”re talking about a self-employed guy, someone who works for a business and is well-entrenched enough to be flexible with his or her schedule, or a semi-retired or retired person who has the interest, desire and the free time.
And that person, whoever it is, shouldn”t be a wanna-be-involved type to the extreme that he or she is an attention/spotlight hog. The focus, after all, should be on the hall of fame and those inducted.
Once you have that person in place, he or she needs to recruit a hall of fame committee. These will be the people who ultimately select the inductees. The advice I received here was to get as broad a cross section of the community with sports interest as possible. In other words, if you recruit nothing but jocks, you”ll hear a lot of interesting stories and get into a lot of arguments, but won”t get much done.
And the ages of the committee members should vary as well.
Committee members should come from as wide a geographical range as possible, especially if the hall of fame in question encompasses a wide area, as a Lake County Hall of Fame certainly would. Can you imagine if all the committee members were from Lakeport, Kelseyville, Lower Lake, etc. It probably wouldn”t work very well.
Set a rock-solid criteria for selection and don”t vary from it. One of the more interesting discussions we had in setting up the Mendocino College Athletic Hall of Fame was a GPA requirement. Some halls of fame don”t care what you did in the classroom. Some don”t even care if you have a criminal record (and I”m talking felonies, not misdemeanors). As a result, some halls take into account your conduct when you played and after you played. It would be a shame to induct someone who can”t attend because he”s incarcerated. Don”t laugh, it”s happened. According to one of my sources, his hall of fame inducted an athlete and couldn”t find him right away … turns out he was serving a stretch in San Quentin for armed robbery. He was summarily un-inducted.
How many years do you need to be out of school to be eligible for induction? Five is pretty standard, but I”ve seen it as high as 10 and as low as three.
How about special categories? It”s standard to induct athletes and coaches, but who else, if any, are eligible? Boosters? Administrators? Sports officials? Media?
Once you have a framework, then you have to raise money necessary to provide the plaques or other awards the inductees will receive. That means holding an induction dinner/ceremony, selling tickets and selling enough to make sure you can cover the costs. Usually you needs sponsors to kick in money as well. And if you survive that part, then you need to find a venue that can accommodate enough people to pull it off, and one that you can afford, not to mention a caterer.
Locating the inductees is another chore, arranging a date for the induction ceremony when they all can attend is a huge challenge, and creating the induction format for the ceremony also takes planning.
Mendocino College”s Athletic Hall of Fame has a presenter introduce each inductee. Usually the inductee picks the presenter.
Voting. Sounds easy, but if you are taking into account five Lake County high schools over span of many years, there will be too many names to choose from, especially in the beginning.
Mendocino College inducted 12 athletes/coaches its inaugural year, and that ceremony lasted about four hours. This past month five athletes and one special inductee were honored and the event was over in less than two hours.
Making a big splash with the inaugural class is necessary to ensure the success of the event … at least that”s the general consensus. If you put ”em to sleep with the first event, you”re in big trouble.
Lake County is long overdue to have its own athletic hall of fame. The question is who will be the point person to get the ball rolling? It”s a giant job.
