COLCHESTER — The Vermont Sports Hall of Fame last week announced its 2019 inductees, and of the 13 named, one is a longtime Middlebury College coach, another is a former Middlebury College athlete, and a third is the father of a current Panther athlete.
The honorees with the Middlebury College ties are former Panther men’s hockey coach Bill Beaney, still the school’s men’s golf coach; former Panther and Champlain Valley Union High School skier Ann Battelle; and former U.S. national champion skier Gale “Tiger” Shaw, a one-time Stowe resident whose daughter Eva Shaw is a goalie for the Panther women’s soccer team.
Bill Beaney, a Cornwall resident, led Middlebury College to eight NCAA Division III men’s hockey championships, including five in a row at one point. He won 516 games in his 28 years at Middlebury and 602 as a college coach. He began his coaching career at BFA-St. Albans, where he led the Bobwhites to three Division I state boys’ hockey titles.
Battelle, a Williston native, was a multi-sport standout at Middlebury and CVU. Battelle went on to become a world-class moguls skier, winning two World Cup championships and a pair of U.S. national titles. She was a four-time U.S. Olympian who earned three top-10 finishes.
Shaw was a standout alpine skier at Dartmouth College and on the World Cup circuit. He skied in two Olympic games and finished his career with nine U.S. national championships. He is currently the CEO of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association.
The other honorees are:
•  Mal Boright, an award-winning journalist who covered and promoted sports in the state for more than five decades and was a founder of the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame in 2011. He died at age 81 in 2016.
•  Elizabeth Burnham, a softball player at Oxbow and the University of Connecticut and Lyndon who later played professional women’s baseball.
•  Larry Damon, a Burlington native and Nordic skier who was UVM’s first NCAA champion in skiing and a four-time Olympian.
•  Harmon “Beaver” Dragon, an auto racer who won more than 50 stock car races on 14 tracks and claimed two-dozen titles on three tracks.
•  Jenny Everett, an All-American field hockey player at Rutland High and Wake Forest who played for the U.S. National Team.
•  Jeff Hughes, a Burlington High and University of Nebraska football player who still holds the state high school record in the 100-yard dash (9.8 seconds).
•  Layne Higgs, an all-star athlete at Spaulding High and basketball player at University of Vermont in the 1960s who coached basketball at St. Johnsbury Academy for more than 30 years, winning three D-I boys’ titles.
•  Ross Powers, a snowboarder who became the first Vermont male to win a Winter Olympics Gold medal and was a multi-time World Cup champion in the sport.
•  Holly Reynolds, a four-time Vermont high school state golf champion and a four-year member of the University of Kansas golf team who has won the state women’s amateur title a record nine times.
•  Rich Tarrant, the Saint Michael’s College basketball program’s all-time leading scorer with 1,772 points and its only first-team All-American.
What is the hall’s seventh class will be inducted at a banquet on April 13 at Trader Duke’s Hotel in South Burlington. After the induction the hall will officially have 87 members. Full bios of the inductees are available online at vermontsportshall.com.
Ticket information for the 2019 induction and dinner will be available soon at vermontsportshall.com. Proceeds from the event go to Prevent Child Abuse Vermont, the hall’s designated charity.