Meet Delaware's Most Influential People in sports in 2024

David Baylor: DIAA leader

Baylor was hired in July by the Delaware Department of Education to oversee the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association, which regulates middle and high school sports in Delaware and operates its state championship events. Baylor, who had been serving as the DIAA’s sportsmanship committee chairman, is a Navy veteran who served 23 years in the Delaware State Police, was director of human resources and training at NKS Distributors, then became Delaware City police chief and then its town manager. He was also player development coach for the University of Delaware football team. Among his major tasks as DIAA chief, Baylor said, were clarifying and simplifying DIAA regulations, especially regarding waiver requests involving player eligibility, transfers, transgender participation and Name/Image/Likeness opportunities for high school athletes.

Ryan Carty: University of Delaware football coach

Hired as University of Delaware football coach in December of 2021, Carty has guided the Blue Hens, the state’s most closely followed team, to two NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision playoff berths, its first in back-to-back years since Cary was back-up quarterback in 2003 and ’04. Delaware’s 9-4 2023 team was its winningest in 13 years. But Carty must now steer Delaware’s challenging climb to the Football Bowl Subdivision and its 2025 entrance to Conference USA.

Brian Catania and Travis Ross: Physical therapists

Based at a ChristianaCare Rehabilitation Services facility south of Newark, the physical therapists have become nationally recognized and frequently sought out by NFL and college football teams, in particular, after developing a treatment plan aimed at recognizing, rehabbing and preventing muscle injuries. Their “core sling screen” tool specifically measures the effectiveness of core muscles and allows for precise rehab and prevention of abdominal, back, groin and quadriceps injuries.

Marquis Dendy: Long jumper, Olympic hopeful

The Middletown High graduate will be trying to make the United States Olympic team for the third time heading into the Summer Games in Paris. Dendy won the U.S. title in the long jump last year, his second but first since 2015, and then placed 12th in the World Track and Field Championships. Dendy was 2016 world indoor champion and earned bronze indoors in 2018 and 2022 and was a seven-time NCAA champion in the long and triple jumps at the University of Florida.

Logan Herring: Boys & Girls Club, Delaware Elite

Herring was just a teenager when he became a camp counselor at Wilmington’s Fraim Boys & Girls Club, then worked with inner-city youth in Baltimore while attending nearby Goucher College. He returned home to Wilmington in 2005 and was co-founder of Delaware Elite, which helped student-athletes stay on the proper academic and social paths. He also returned to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Delaware before becoming executive director for the Kingswood Community Center in northeast Wilmington. He has also been involved with REACH (Redevelopment Education & Community Health) Riverside, which aims to revitalize that city neighborhood; the Warehouse Project providing recreational and social opportunities for city youth; the Vision Coalition, aiming to improve public school education; and Dream Chasers, which uses basketball as a path to personal improvement.

Chuck Klous: Indoor Track Delaware

Klous is co-founder of Indoor Track Delaware, which since 2021 has been working on finding the money and land to build an indoor track facility that could also host other sports such as volleyball, wrestling and basketball, and be a regional draw. Delaware has staged its annual high school track and field championships in Landover, Maryland, since 2014, after the University of Delaware’s indoor track at its Field House was covered by turf so it could become a practice site for all Blue Hens teams.

Andrew McDonough: B+ Foundation

The namesake of the B+ Foundation was a Salesianum freshman soccer player when he became suddenly ill and diagnosed with leukemia in January of 2007. McDonough died six months later, but by then his family had created the foundation, named after Andrew’s blood type and his positive attitude. Operated by his father Joe, the foundation has raised millions of dollars for cancer research and supported cancer-stricken children and their families.

Nicole Poore: DIAA task force chair

The state senator represents the 12th Senate District, which covers an area straddling the Delaware River from New Castle to Port Penn. But as the mother and aunt of two state champion wrestlers, she has long taken a strong interest in improving sports opportunities in Delaware, including a futile effort to have the University of Delaware restore its wrestling program and altering DIAA coaching-out-of-season limitations. She is now chairing a task force taking a closer look at how the DIAA operates and regulates sports in Delaware with the intent of making it a more efficient body.

Duffy Samuels: Duffy's Hope

Samuels is a former All-State point guard on the basketball team at Glasgow High who then excelled collegiately at Old Dominion. He has operated Duffy’s Hope, a community outreach and education program that has aided thousands of sixth- through 12th-graders, mostly from Wilmington, since 1998 through twice-a-week classes and a 10-week summer basketball league with educational workshops. It culminates with a celebrity game at the 76ers Fieldhouse. Samuels also recently launched the Duffy’s Hope Transitional Residence Program, providing housing and personal enrichment of women age 18 to 23 who are too old for foster care.

Alecia Shields-Gadson: Del State athletic director

As athletic director at Delaware State University, Shields-Gadson oversees the six men’s and 13 women’s athletic teams aiming to improve and raise DSU’s reputation statewide, regionally and nationally. DSU does so with an athletics budget among the biggest among Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference schools and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities. She is leading efforts to raise money for athletic-facility improvements that DSU hopes could eventually include a new Alumni Stadium grandstand and construction of an indoor practice fieldhouse.

Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Here are Delaware's most influential people in sports in 2024