Krause: Hall of Fame list has impressive credentials

There have been several attempts, over the years, to arrive at a combined Lynn athletic Hall of Fame, and they’ve always been sidetracked and bogged down at some point.But the Agganis Foundation, over the summer, took a crack at it. And since the foundation honors the memory of perhaps Lynn’s greatest athlete ever, it undertook the task of sorting out more than a century of the city’s athletic excellence and whittled it down to something truly representative of the its rich legacy.Officially, this is the Agganis Foundation’s Lynn Sports Hall of Fame at the Lynn Museum (where it will be housed permanently). The foundation and the museum are working closely on an induction ceremony in the coming months.Look this list over. You’ll see that it’s extremely comprehensive and well thought out.The obvious choices, such as Harry Agganis, Boley Dancewicz, Tony Thurman and Frank Carey, are no-brainers. They could be in a lot of Hall of Fames, let alone this one.Some, however, require a bit of an explanation. For example, Sharon Nicosia was among the first women in Lynn to really make her mark as a multi-sport athlete in high school and beyond. She recorded her exploits long before girls and women’s sports exploded onto the national consciousness, and as such, they don’t exactly roll off the tongue. But she, and many of the other women here, are impressive and worthy nonetheless.Michelle Smith was one of Classical’s truly great basketball players and a member of the Brown University Hall of Fame. And Helen Ridley scored over 1,000 points at Classical and became captain of a Division 1 women’s basketball program at Quinnipiac.Lynners Lynda Lipson and Lisa McGloin played for Bishop Fenwick, but Lipson became a US Olympian in track and field (we haven’t had that many); and McGloin caught for four straight Division 1 state champion softball teams, and then played at North Carolina. She’s continued as the very successful coach at Concord-Carlisle, where she’s also won a state title.The criteria were pretty specific. Either the inductee had to have played professionally, at the big league level (if applicable), or done something really noteworthy in college or somewhere else along the way.Thurman never played in the pros, for example, but he’s the city’s only consensus All-America in football, and was on the 1985 Cotton Bowl-winning Boston College football team.The Akers brothers – Arthur and Jeff – played at the highest levels of collegiate football (for UCLA and Michigan, respectively) and both played in major bowl games. Arthur Akers, when all is said and done, has to be considered among the best ever to play football at Classical.There’s also a category for coaches, and again, the standards are high. All coaches had to have won at least one state championship (where applicable) or made a major contribution in other ways. Tony Pavone, for example, coached countless Golden Gloves winners in boxing (he was also an armed forces welterweight champion).Many are back-to-backers, such as Jim Tgettis, Red Foote, Tom Grassa, Colleen (Parker) Newbury, Mike O’Brien, and Frank Pagliuca. Also, some, such as O’Brien, Carey and Foote, have sprouted some pretty prolific coaching trees.Not everyone who belongs to a Hall of Fame has to have necessarily excelled in sports. And two of the inductees – Harold O. Zimman and Dr. Elmo Benedetto – certainly made their marks in other ways. Zimman was a coach and a mentor to Agganis, and also helped found the Agganis Foundation. Benedetto, as Lynn’s longtime athletic director, helped many of the Hall of Famers under his watch get into college – without which a lot of them wouldn’t be mentioned on this list. Both were athletic role models for players and coaches who came after them ? just as many of the Hall of Famers were/are.These things aren’t easy to do. But the committee feels it has come up with a representative list.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item. He can be reached at [email protected].