Ask St. Bonaventure University students about the history of Bonnies athletics, and the response might be the school made it to the Final Four in 1970 and won the NIT in 1977. However, St. Bonaventure’s sporting history extends far beyond those two years. Players from all the teams have excelled while wearing the brown and white and deserve recognition as well.
The St. Bonaventure University Athletics Hall of Fame, started in 1969, was created to recognize and honor individuals who made exceptional contributions to the intercollegiate program at St. Bonaventure University and who have continued to demonstrate in their lives the values imparted by intercollegiate athletics, according to gobonnies.com
The athletic department announced at Saturday’s men’s basketball game against Duquesne as the Class of 2017 will be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Kelly (Chevez) Bartlett ’06, Heather MacDougall ’05 and Tom Middleton ’63 will be inducted on Saturday, June 3 at 1:30 p.m. in the Rigas Family Theater in the Quick Center for the Arts as part of Alumni Reunion Weekend.
Bartlett was a star women’s lacrosse player from East Rochester, New York, who still holds the record for goals and assists for the program with 121 and 119 for a combined 240 points. She led the nation during her junior season with 39 assists and was a three-time selection to the All-Conference team helping the team advance to the Atlantic 10 tournament twice.
MacDougall, of Burlington, Ontario, scored a respectable 10 goals combined in her first two seasons on the women’s soccer team, but took off her junior year, scoring 15 goals and racking up 34 points. She led the Atlantic 10 in both categories that season, the only player ever to do so. She also became the first St. Bonaventure player named to the National Soccer Coaches Association of America All-Region Team.
Middleton was a standout centerfielder on the baseball team, from South Orange, New Jersey, who holds the Bonaventure record for most hits to lead off a season with 10. He, three times, led the team in batting average, runs, hits, RBI and on-base percentage, while also making the all-star team for the Western New York College Baseball Conference.
According to Steve Mest, associate athletics director for external relations and a member of the Hall of Fame Selection Committee, the selection process is open to anyone, and a form to submit a nomination can be found on gobonnies.com. The requirements for nomination are the person must be a standout athlete, coach or administrator who graduated from Bonaventure more than 10 years ago.
“We generally meet three times a year. I’m in charge of keeping [a] list of inducted people,” Mest said. “There is somewhere around 25 active nominees who we considered for this past year’s nomination. Anyone who was nominated but did not get selected is on the list for a five-year span, even if they did not get nominated this year.”
The process of selection for the Hall of Fame is similar to other colleges and even professional-level Hall of Fame committees, Mest said.
“The way we run our selection process, it’s a secret ballot vote. We do discuss each nominee individually,” Mest said. “I can’t tell you besides my own opinion why they were selected. After everyone votes, each vote is worth a certain number of points. The three that come out on top were chosen for 2017. It’s not totally black and white, as there is no set number. There could be two, three, four, five athletes selected. We typically don’t go over five inductees in a given year.”
While there are a number of athletes to pick from, Mest said a few are typically the leaders of their particular class.
“Clearly these three rose to the top. [Chevez and MacDougall] were two of the all-time leading scorers in their sports. They were two of the best players ever,” Mest said. “Middleton falls into a more of a legacy category. For me, it was the number of alumni who supported his candidacy. I’ve never seen that kind of support. It was actually his former coach Fred Handler, a legend at St. Bonaventure, who came forward and personally nominated him. He played in the ‘60s, so it takes a lot of digging and research through the archives to find stats, as you can’t just Google Tom Middleton.”
The Class of 2017 will join such names in the Hall of Fame as basketball players Bob Lanier, Samuel and Thomas Stith and Greg Sanders, and football and basketball coach Carroll “Mike” Reilly, for whom the Reilly Center is named.
signorra15@bonaventure.edu
