2004 HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

GEORGE "BUD'' ALEWELT
The Lanphier High School graduate won nine varsity letters in basketball, football and track, was a three-year all-city selection in basketball and played on the varsity four years. In track, he ran the mile and on the 440 relay. In football, he was a quarterback as a sophomore and an end as a junior and senior. He was offered a basketball scholarship by Bradley University but was called into military service and spent three years and three months with the Army Air Force during World War II. When the war ended, he was picked to play basketball on the base team that traveled to Cairo, Egypt, and played in the Middle East Basketball Tournament. After his military tour was over, he came back to Springfield and played Muny A softball with Sangamo Electric, and he also played basketball on the Sangamo Electric team in the Muny A League as well as for the One Day Cleaners team that was inducted into Hall of Fame in 1999. 

ED GVAZDINKAS
The 1970 Griffin graduate who earned eight varsity letters in high school for baseball and basketball. He was a three-time all-city selection in baseball, and he played on the Springfield Colt League All-Star team that went to the Colt League World Series in Riverside, Calif., in 1968. He also played on the CWLP Connie Mack team that qualified for the Connie Mack World Series in 1969 and 1970, and he was MVP of the Midwest Regional Connie Mack Tournament in 1969. He attended Western Illinois University, where he earned All-America honors in 1974, when he led the nation with 13 pitching wins. He still holds school records for wins (13), innings pitched (108) and complete games (12) in a season and is the school record-holder for career wins (24). He's No. 2 on the school's list for inning pitched (275) and complete games (23) in a career and is third in career strikeouts (203) and ERA (2.58). He also has coached youth league baseball, basketball and soccer and helped organize the first Sacred Heart-Griffin hockey team.

JOE HAMENDE
The 1962 Griffin graduate who was considered one of the finest left-handed pitchers around during his high school days. At the 1962 Connie Mack World Series at Lanphier Park, Hamende pitched a no-hitter for Standard Concrete. After one year at the University of Illinois, he signed with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964 and in his first professional season at Brunswick of the Class A Georgia-Florida League he was 4-4 with a 1.13 earned run average with 44 strikeouts and 18 walks in 55 innings. He also spent time in the Cincinnati and Montreal organizations but never made it to the major leagues. At Cedar Rapids of the Class A Midwest League one season he was 10-1 with a 0.82 ERA.

NORM KEEFNER
He earned nine varsity letters at Cathedral in football, basketball and baseball. He was a two-year starter in football and an all-city selection as a senior. In basketball he was a two-year starter, and his junior year Cathedral played in the state tournament. He was all-tournament in 1948-49 and also played in the first City Tournament. He was a three-year starter in baseball and was the team batting leader as a sophomore and pitching leader (8-0) as a junior. He attended Western Illinois University and compiled a 9-1 pitching record his first two years before heading off for military service. He played for One Day Cleaners and was a member of the team that played in AAU national tournaments in Chicago and Denver. He also played basketball and baseball in the Springfield Muni League and was a supervisor of the Jack Rossiter Baseball School for two years. He coached basketball at Farmersville, Raymond Lincolnwood and Springfield High and won 310 games, four city tournament titles, several league championships and three regionals. While at Lincolnwood his team won the 1965 Springfield Regional. He was the District 14 Coach of the Year. His 12-year coaching record at Springfield was 132-171. Keefner died Jan. 17, 2004,  at the age of 72.

BOB KELLEY
The Springfield High School graduate set Big Ten Conference track and field records at Illinois. In 1939, as an SHS senior, he won the state 880-yard run championship after placing fourth at the state meet as a junior. He was also an excellent running back for SHS in the fall of 1938 - the only year he played football for the Senators. Kelley was a three-year letter winner in track at Illinois, winning the 880-yard dash in the 1944 NCAA Championships and winning Big Ten Conference titles in the 440 and 880 in 1945. He registered 67 career victories in college. After he graduated from Illinois, he served a three-year stint in the Navy before settling in Chicago, where he was a physical education teacher. The 80-year-old Kelley died Feb. 25, 2001.

JIM ZIMMERMANN
The 1969 Lanphier graduate ran cross country and played basketball and baseball for the Lions, earning eight varsity letters in three years. He was a three-year varsity starter in all three sports. As a sophomore he was an honorable mention all-city selection in basketball, was the No. 2 hitter in the baseball City Series and was second-team all-city. As a junior he was the No. 4 runner on the cross country team, was an all-city and honorable mention all-state pick in basketball and led the baseball team in hitting with a .396 average in earning second-team all-city honors. As a senior was the No. 3 or 4 runner in cross country, averaged 21.4 points in earning all-city, all-conference and all-state honors in basketball and was second-team all-city in baseball. He still holds the Lanphier school record for points in a game (43), and he was Lanphier's 1969 Athlete of the Year. He attended Bradley on a basketball scholarship and averaged 15.2 points on the freshman team. He was a three-time All-Missouri Valley Conference All-Academic selection. He coached varsity basketball at Riverton from 1973-79 with a 109-51 record, earning District Coach of the Year honors in 1978 and 1979. The 1977-78 team was No. 1 in the state for a period and finished 25-2. The 1978-79 team finished fourth in the Class A State Tournament. He was 122-113 from 1982-91 coaching at East Peoria, giving him a 231-164 career coaching record. He's one of the few people to have played and coached in the IHSA state tournament.

 

TEAM

1952 FEITSHANS FOOTBALL TEAM - The Flyers completed the first perfect season in school history with a 9-0 record, won their first city title since 1946 and the first Central Conference title since 1948. Marvin Schultz was the coach, and the team actually ended the season with a 12-game winning streak over two seasons. Most of the games were close. Feitshans won five games by a single touchdown or less, and only once was the margin three touchdowns.

 

FRIENDS OF SPORT

 

Jim Davis - Began coaching his daughter's Khoury League softball team in 1962, and his 1976 women's fast-pitch team won the Class AA state tournament as Maroa Perfect. That team included Hall of Famers Deb Reznicek and Nancy Davenport. His Springfield Davenport Builders Rockettes team finished third in the state Class AA state tournament in 1980, and won the state title in 1981. His 1984 Rockettes team finished third at the state tournament, and in 1985 and '86 the Rockettes won the state title. The 1985 team finished fifth in the nation. He also has served as an assistant softball coach at Sacred Heart-Griffin and Lincoln Land Community College, and for the past 15 years he has been the head coach at Lincoln Land. He was inducted into the ASA Hall of Fame in 1986, was a three-time Coach of the Year while at Lincoln Land and serves as ASA district commissioner.

Anthony "Tony Trent" Schrage - He was born and raised in St. Rose, Ill., a town of about 200 people 30 miles east of St. Louis near Breese. He graduated from Southern Illinois-Carbondale in 1960 and began his broadcasting career at WBYS radio in Canton. He moved to Springfield in January of 1962 he began work at WCVS, a career that last almost 20 years. He began in radio sales for WCVS part-time and then became a full-time member of the sales staff in July of 1962. In September of 1962 he was asked to broadcast high school football after the play-by-play man quit. Then it was high school basketball. He stayed at it for 19 years, about 1,600 basketball games, 400 football games and a handful of baseball games. He was also the lead person in getting the City Basketball Tournament and the Sangamon County Basketball Tournament to be scheduled on separate weeks in the mid-1960s. Schrage was part of the group that raised the first several thousand dollars to get a cover for the baseball diamond at Lanphier Park when the Class AAA Redbirds moved to Springfield from New Orleans in 1978.

Mary Lee Standridge - Mary Lee Bollman was born in 1933 and lived her entire life on Springfield's northeast side. She started attending races at Springfield Speedway as a 14-year-old. A year after graduating from Lanphier High School, she married Dick Standridge, who raced for more than 30 years.  The couple had six children, including four sons who became involved in racing. She became a scorer at Springfield Speedway in the early 1970s and also worked at tracks in Jacksonville and Champaign. In addition, she worked as an occasional scorer for major short track events, including indoor midget races at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich. She also worked regularly for the United States Auto Club's late model division in 1986 and 1987, working at tracks in six states. She also periodically traveled to score races for the All-Stars Circuit of Champions and World of Outlaws. She was named Woman of the Year by the Capitol Area Racing Sponsors Club of Springfield in the 1980s, and in 1988 she received the Diana Gilmore Woman Behind the Scenes Award during the Indianapolis 500 banquet. She continues  to work as a track scorer at Jacksonville Speedway.