Ashland County Sports Hall of Fame Announces Class of 2024
ASHLAND − After the evaluation of 30 potential individual candidates and 12 Great Team of the Past nominations, the Ashland County Sports Hall of Fame has made their selections for the Class of 2024.
HOF President Dave Gray said there are limits in the selection process for the nomination committee of nine trustees to evaluate.
“We received the largest number of team nominees for the ‘Great Team of the Past’ with a total of 12,” he said. “And there are many excellent teams that have played in Ashland County. Unfortunately, we can only select one team per induction.”
Gray said he has had the privilege of being a part of the HOF since its conception in 1983 and feels the Class of 2024 is one of the best to be honored.
“It is a very diversified class with many different sports,” said Gray. “We are inducting a few excellent golfers and golfing/pro coach in 2024 that shows we have excellent golfers in the area as well as tremendous wrestlers that give us a wide variety of athletes to evaluate. Our area has always been strong in high school track and cross country and we are honoring some of those excellent runners and they are still running in marathons as well.”
Inductees for the Class of 2024 include:
2000 AHS Graduate Robert Castor
2002 Mapleton Graduate Marcus Gordon
2008 AHS Graduate Taylor Housewright
1994 Mapleton Graduate Justin Kerr
2011 AHS Graduate Shaina Corbin Kidd
1978 AHS Graduate Tom Marquette
2000 AHS Graduate Matthew Paullin
Golf Pro, PGA Pro Daniel Priest
1986 L-P Graduate Dana Stake Riffel
Longtime Football Coach John Saccomen
1999 AHS Graduate Christopher Yoder
Trustee Achievement Award, Robert & Janet Archer
Great Team of the Past, 1990 Loudonville HS Football Team
Gray said information for attending the event will be sent out early next summer.
“Our banquet will be held on Saturday, Oct. 12, 204 at the AU Convention Center starting at 6 p.m.,” said Gray. “We will start advertising for the event in the TG toward the end of June or early July. The inductees will be giving us a list of invitees that we will be sending letters out to them at the end of June with info and ticket information.”
More: Loudonville-Perryville Sports Hall of Fame adds 19 Members
The HOF display is located at the Noonan House and has recently been upgraded to give visitors an even better experience.
“We just added a TV screen/digital setup so you can look up the inductees, teams and trustee achievement award winners over the years,” Gray said. “This was done by donations to the HOF over the past year.
“We are very fortunate that the Ashland County Historical Society gave us an area to display the HOF. We are asking for mementos to add to walls and cases to make it even better.”
This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Find out who was inducted into Ashland County's 2024 Sports HOF Class
