Joliet Sports Hall of Fame will induct new class

JOLIET – Five new candidates are set to be inducted into the Joliet Sports Hall of Fame next month.

The Class of 2014 will include Ken Parker, Matt Senffner, Brent Wadsworth, Terry Gannon and Ed Brady.

The new honorees will be the first to be inducted since 2010. They join 45 other area athletes in the hall. The project began in 2003.

Ken Parker

Parker’s induction is posthumous. Parker played on the Whiz Kids, the 1942-43 University of Illinois Fighting Illini men’s basketball team that won the Big 10 title and finished the war-shortened regular season as the nation’s top-ranked team.

Parker went on to become basketball coach at Joliet Central High School for several years, followed by stints as athletic director at both Central and Joliet Junior College. He also coached basketball at St. Patrick’s Catholic School, where he amassed a record of 71-1.

“He was one of the most highly-respected people we have ever come across,” said Dick Goss, Hall of Fame committee member and sports editor of The Herald-News. “You’d be hard-pressed to ever find anyone who had a bad word to say about him.

Matt Senffner

Senffner, former athletic director from Providence Catholic High School, coached at the school for 38 years, guiding it through its transition from Class A to Class AA competition. He coached all nine of the school’s state champion football teams and won an IHSA-record 300 games.

“Obviously he was very successful on the field, but if you talk to any of the students who played for him, they rave even more about him off the field,” said Dave Laketa, chairman of the Joliet Hall of Fame committee. “He developed friendships with people who played for him. That’s really a tribute. There isn’t a guy who played for him that wouldn’t go to bat for him.”

Brent Wadsworth

Wadsworth, a golf course architect and founder of Plainfield-based Wadsworth Golf Construction Co., has built hundreds of golf courses across the U.S. since the 1950s. Many are consistently rated among the top courses in the country.

Wadsworth is a patron of the arts, and a benefactor of the Rialto Square Theatre. In January, Wadsworth announced a major endowment for the Joliet Area Historical Museum that Museum Director Greg Peerbolte said was “a huge game-changer for our organization.”

His Wadsworth Golf Charities Foundation is dedicated to improving communities through the embodiment of the moral, ethical and cultural codes of the game of golf.

Terry Gannon

Gannon, a Joliet Catholic High School graduate, went on to North Carolina State. He was a member of the Cardiac Pack, Coach Jim Valvano’s 1983 national champion team.

“As a player, he was one of the best this area ever had,” Goss said. “He’d average 25 points a game before there was even a 3-point line.”

After college, with prompting by Valvano, Gannon went into broadcasting. Through the years, his assignments with ESPN, ABC Sports, The Golf Channel and other stations included the Olympics, the PGA and Champions tours, college basketball and football, pro soccer, pro tennis, the Tour de France, Indianapolis 500, Belmont Stakes, Little League World Series, figure skating, skiing, motorcycle racing, beach volleyball and more.

Ed Brady

Brady led his hometown Morris High School Redskins to a state championship in football before going on to play for the University of Illinois, where he played in the 1983 Rose Bowl.

After college, Brady spent 12 season in the NFL as a linebacker and long snapper. Brady played for the Los Angeles Rams, Cincinnati Bengals and Tampa Buccaneers. He was a member of the Bengals’ Super Bowl XXIII team.

The Joliet Sports Hall of Fame was started in 2003. It is located in the Hall of Fame Room at Silver Cross Field.

The committee eventually hopes to move the hall to the Joliet Area Historical Museum, where it could be on year-round display, with more room and better visibility, Laketa said.

A baseball display at the museum beginning June 21 will feature posters of the hall of fame inductees and pictures from their induction.

IF YOU GO
What: The Joliet Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony

When: 6:30 p.m. June 17 at Silver Cross Field, prior to the Joliet Slammers home game against the Normal CornBelters.

Details: The celebration will include a private reception for the recipients and their guests from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., followed by an on-field presentation of Hall of Fame jerseys and induction ceremony. Afterward, recipients and guests will have the opportunity to watch the game from a Slammers skybox.