Highland names new Hall of Fame class

By ROB HAMILTON and JIM WHARTON

High­land will induct the 2013 class into their Ath­letic Hall of Fame on Jan. 12, 2013.

The class includes Ken Throck­mor­ton (Sparta/Marengo, 1928), Lynn Gilt (Chester­ville, 1952), Don Givens (Sparta/Marengo, 1962) and Jerry Bower (coach/contributor).

High­land inductees are Don David­son (1968), Larry Squires (1977), Belinda Cre­means Pinker­ton (1983), Jim Gray (1986), Shel­ley Squires Hornsby (1988), Lori Hilton Mack (1992) and Amanda Knapp (1994).

This is the sec­ond class to be inducted into the school’s Ath­letic Hall of Fame, which came to be this past Jan­u­ary to com­mem­o­rate the 50th year of the school’s exis­tance. The Hall of Fame was cre­ated to rec­og­nize both High­land ath­letes, as well as those who attended the Chester­ville, Marengo and Sparta schools before they con­sol­i­dated to form Highland.

The Hall of Fame inductees were announced on Mon­day, Oct. 29, with a num­ber of those peo­ple on hand to speak about being named to the Hall’s sec­ond class.

“I’m ecsta­tic,” said Larry Squires. “I think it’s a good thing over­all. I wasn’t shocked, but I’m still happy about it.”

He added that there’s a sense of com­mu­nity with the Hall of Fame, not­ing that he had a high school team­mate get inducted last year and one of his coaches (Bower) will be going in with him.

Hornsby agreed, not­ing, “It’s (being inducted) nice when I still have kids going here. It’s def­i­nitely an honor.”

Bower, who coached mul­ti­ple sports at the junior high level for decades, was extremely pleased to be named.

“It’s a great honor,” he said. “I enjoyed being with the younger kids to teach them fun­da­men­tals and discipline.”

Hall of Fame Day on Jan. 12, 2013 will get under­way with a social hour from 1–2 p.m. in the high school cafe­to­rium. The din­ner will begin at 2 p.m. with the induc­tion pro­gram begin­ning at roughly 2:45. Each inductee will have five min­utes for an accep­tance speech.

After the induc­tions are com­pleted, the class will gather in Her­itage Hall out­side the gym­na­sium for the unveil­ing of the Hall of Fame Wall with the 11 new mem­bers inducted. A photo ses­sion will follow.

High­land will be meet­ing Buck­eye Val­ley in a boys’ bas­ket­ball triple­header that evening. The fresh­man game will begin at 4:30 p.m. and the JV game starts at 6 p.m. The Hall of Fame class will be intro­duced to the bas­ket­ball fans between the JV and var­sity games.

Another part of Hall of Fame Day is the silent auc­tion. Base­ball, bas­ket­ball and foot­ball mem­o­ra­bilia has been secured from the likes of Dusty Baker, Clark Kel­logg, Jim Ley­land, Lou Holtz, Jay Bur­son, Gene Tenace, Len Daw­son, Bevo Fran­cis, Galen Cisco and many other notable for­mer ath­letes — all with Ohio ties. The silent auc­tion begins at 1 p.m. and con­cludes at 6:30.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Nov 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.