Coaches, administrators, community members, and the media are all teaming up to induct past Hastings High athletes to the newly founded Hastings High School Athletic Hall of Fame on September 26.
“It was spearheaded by Coach (Lance) Creech and Coach (Greg) Mays who realized that we were one of the few high schools in Nebraska who don’t actually have a sports hall of fame,” Activities Director Tracy Douglas said.
Hastings High has one of the largest groups of athletes in the Nebraska Hall of Fame, but that is a little known fact among HHS students and athletes today. Key members in creating the hall of fame recognize that and want local athletes to be more enriched in their school’s sports history.
“This school has such an amazing athletic history, and we want to make sure the kids are connected to that,” Mays said. “Showing that through the years this school has been able to do amazing things, that kids who grew up in the same place that you guys grew up, dealt with the same benefits and same disadvantages, did great things.”
Over 100 years of athletics at Hastings High is too much to be remembered by just one person, so a committee was put together of a wide variety of people.
“We had a couple coaches on the committee, Mrs. Douglas, we got a couple community members from the Booster Club, we got some people from the media,” Mays said. “We tried to draw people who had different experiences with Tiger sports.”
With so many athletes in HHS history, it could have easily been difficult to pick just a select group to be inducted into the Hall of Fame this year. That’s why the committee decided to start at a basic place.
“A good place to start with our hall of fame, was to start with the people the state’s already recognized,” Douglas said.
These individuals are Tom Osborne, Chuck Stickels, Shona Jones, Roy Bassett, Johnny Hopp, Dennis Albers, Jim White, and Doug Phelps. They will also be joined by the 1993 and 1994 championship football teams and the 1954 state championship basketball team when they are inducted later this month and honored at the homecoming game on Friday, September 25.
“We’ll do kind of a talking about them during the game like between quarters and stuff,” said Douglas.
The Hastings High Hall of Fame is yet to have a decided location, but Douglas has an idea.
“An interactive video board that would hang in the North Gym. It would be like a touch screen and you could, you know, pull up pictures and maybe even videos,” Douglas said.
Hastings High Athletics has faced its bad days and its good days, but no matter what the athletes are all still part of a school that has a rich history that will be celebrated with the hall of fame.
Tickets to the Hastings Hall of Fame banquet on Saturday September 26 are available for $25 in the office.
