Montgomery County will be well-represented in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, which began this week, with a team that includes swimmer Katie Ledecky in her fourth Olympics and freestyle wrestler Helen Maroulis in her third. They continue to grow the spirit of the Montgomery County Sports Hall of Fame, which is also looking ahead to a big future.
The County Sports Hall of Fame, which was founded in 2019, recently named high school football coaching legend Bob Milloy as the new chair of its board of directors. Earlier this year, the Sports Hall of Fame found a physical home as part of the new Silver Spring Recreation and Aquatic Center in Downtown Silver Spring. On Tuesday, July 23, a new sculpture of former gold medal-winning gymnast Dominque Dawes was dedicated outside of the recreation center with County Executive Marc Elrich and County Councilmember Gabe Albornoz leading the ceremonies.
Dawes, who attended Gaithersburg High School, was a member of the first class of inductees for the County Sports Hall of Fame. Ledecky, a seven-time Olympic gold medal winner who went to the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, and Milloy, the winningest football coach in Maryland high school history, also were inducted in that first class.
Ensuing classes have included athletes, coaches and media members whose roots stem from all parts of the County. Sure to be joining that list in the future will be Maroulis, a Magruder High School graduate who is the first U.S. woman wrestler to make three Olympic Games. At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she became the first-ever American to win an Olympic gold medal in women's freestyle wrestling.
As the Sports Hall of Fame enters its next era, it is soliciting nominees for its next class as it also works on plans for it future.
More information about the Hall of Fame and a form to offer nominees for future classes is available at https://mcshf.org/. The list of past inductees and their achievements also is on the website.
“We have already inducted an incredible list of people from many generations and many sports,” said Milloy, who won 405 games in 47 years of coaching at Whitman, Springbrook, Sherwood and Good Counsel high schools. “We also know that there are lots of fantastic people that need to be honored from the past and that there are current and upcoming athletes that will earn their place on the list. These people have made their families, friends, schools and communities so proud and we are working on furthering the Sports Hall of Fame into an institution that will honor their achievements and make sure they are always remembered and recognized.”
Induction ceremonies for the Sports Hall of Fame have previously been held at the Silver Spring Civic Building as Trish Heffelfinger, the former founding executive director of the Maryland Soccer Foundation in Germantown, served as the first board chair of the County Sports Hall of Fame. She stepped down from that position earlier this year.
Milloy said the immediate goals of the nonprofit organization will be to hire a fulltime executive director and to have future induction as part of a dinner ceremony.
“What the County Sports Hall of Fame has created in just a few years has been incredible, with much of that due to the high level of achievements of the inductees and a significant part due to the early board of directors who were determined to honor those achievements,” said Milloy. “We now are ready to move to the next level and our intent is get more members of the County athletic community involved. We invite people to submit nominations for consideration and for themselves to be part of our activities and our mission. We are here to be an important part of Montgomery County.”