Here & There....Summertime Reading

Hope everyone is having a great summer so far. It seems amazing, but football season is only 2 months away. Wont be long until 2-a-days begin and another season of Friday nights at Red Rider Stadium will be upon us.

Got a few items of note below so lets get to it.

A New Scoreboard Coming to Red Rider Stadium.

Some emails just really brighten your day. Like the one I got a few days ago with the subject line "Scoreboard."

I knew from the person sending it exactly what it was in reference to, just didn't know the details. I put out a few more emails & text messages to confirm what I had hoped to be true.

I can say with 100% certainty that this is indeed true....Red Rider Stadium will be getting a new state-of-the-art scoreboard before week 1 of the 2011 football season.

More details below.

The 2011 Orrville High School Sports Hall of Fame Induction Class

The 11th induction class of the Orrville Sports Hall of Fame has been confirmed and will be inducted on October 8, 2011 at Orrville High School.

This year's class of eight inductees puts the total number of OHS-HOF inductees since the first induction in 1991 at 89 members.

My own personal opinion...this is a very solid class of high achievers, both at high school and in college, and as you'll read, some very solid classroom achievers as well.  Most excelled in multiple sports and a lot of the class saw success at the highest level of high school athletics, the state tournament.  In fact, 7 of the 8 either qualified for the state tournament or were named All-Ohio at some point of their high school career.

Once more, please let me clarify how this nomination and selection process works.  I know last time and probably every time this happens, there's some that think the inductees are handpicked, and that couldn't be further from the truth.

The Sports Hall of Fame committee (which I am honored to say I am a part of)...receives nominations from the general public.  Announcements were made on the radio, in the newspaper and on this very website to send in nominations.  Those nominations were compiled into a list, which I believe was over 50 this time around.

That list was narrowed by a vote to 20 finalists, and from that list, up to 10 finalists that receive a majority vote, are the induction class.  Inductees MUST ACCEPT the invitation for induction.

If you can't at least call that a fair process, I'm not sure what to tell you.

Join me in welcoming this year's class.......

OHSAA State Track Wrapup

Seven OHS track athletes headed to Columbus this weekend and six returned as All-Ohioans, highlighted by Stewart Turner's trifecta of All-Ohio honors (Long jump, 100m dash, 4x200 relay) and Drew Brenner's double All-Ohio effort in the 300 hurdles & the 4x200 relay.