Greater Utica Sports HOF welcomes Class of 2023
UTICA - Four individuals and one memorable team will be honored when the Greater Utica Sports Hall of Fame welcomes its 33rd induction class.
The Hall will honor DJ Carstensen, Archi Cianfrocco, Jerry Cook, Jess Jecko and the 1983 Utica Blue Sox at a Sept. 17 ceremony at the 171 Events Center.
Carstensen was part of the initial Division I basketball recruiting class at what was then Utica College in 1981 and was a team captain for the Pioneers for whom he scored 962 career points and led the team in rebounding his final two years. The New Hartford resident, originally recruited from Iowa, now officiates basketball at the Division I level and has drawn assignments as late as the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds of the men's NCAA Tournament.
Cianfrocco, a baseball player from Rome, starred for Rome Free Academy, Smith Post and Onondaga Community College before transferring for Purdue University and being drafted by the Montreal Expos. He played seven seasons in the major leagues with the Expos and San Diego Padres before traveling abroad to play for the Seibu Lions in the Japan's Pacific League. In all, he played 12 professional seasons in the United States. He hit .241 with 34 big league home runs, including a career-high 12 during the 1993 season when he was traded from Montreal to San Diego.
NASCAR Hall of Famer Cook is a longtime Rome resident who got his racing career started at Utica-Rome Speedway as a 13-year-old driver. He was the track champion at Utica-Rome in 1969 and won six NASCAR National Modified championships and 342 races before retiring in 1982. Cook was later a NASCAR executive and was inducted into that Hall of Fame in 2016.
Jecko, a star athlete at Sauquoit Valley High School, was the goalie on Syracuse University's 2015 national championship field hockey team. She posted a 1.37 goals against average for the 2014 team that was the national runner-up and lowered that number to 0.86 as a senior when the Orange went 21-1 in her 22 starts and defeated the University of North Carolina 4-2 in the championship game.
The Blue Sox competed as an independent team in the New York-Penn League in 1983 when author Roger Kahn came on board as an investor and documented the season in "Good Enough to Dream." Without a major league affiliate to supply players, the Blue Sox beat the Little Falls Mets by half a game in the standings to claim the Eastern Division title then defeated the Newark Orioles in the best-of-three championship series. The team was managed by Jim Gattis with current Greater Utica Sports Hall of Fame board member Joanne Gerace, an inductee herself, as the general manager.
Several of the players from that Blue Sox team plan to be at the Sunday ceremony and there will be a meet-and-greet event with them Friday at 6 p.m. at Tiny's Grill.
Doors open Sunday at noon with serving beginning at 1 p.m. and the induction ceremony at 2 p.m. Tickets are $50 for adults and $25 for those under 18, and they are available for purchase at CNY Awards and Apparel.
This article originally appeared on Times Telegram: Greater Utica Sports HOF inducting Class of 2023 Sept. 17
