The Western Washington University Athletics Hall of Fame Ceremony will be held this Saturday (May 21) at 1 pm in Sam Carver Gymnasium.
Following a two-year hiatus caused by COVID-19, six former Vikings will be inducted into the WWU Athletics Hall of Fame with the ceremony open and free to the public beginning at 1 pm. Free parking is available in the C lots located on the south end of the WWU campus.
The ceremony will also be streamed online with closed captioning options via the WWU Athletics YouTube Channel.
The 2022 class is the largest since the inaugural WWU hall of fame ceremony, which had seven inductees, was held in 1968.
2022 WWU Athletics Hall of Fame Inductees:
Three are former Viking athletes. They include Jodie Kaczor Berry, a standout point guard in women’s basketball at Western who has gone on to become a top NCAA Division I assistant coach; Michael Koenen, who played professionally for 10 years in the National Football League after a record-breaking career as a punter and placekicker for the Vikings, and Terri McMahan, who was a Western volleyball team captain in the early 1970s and went on to earn state high school hall of fame honors as a coach and administrator.
Rounding out the honorees are Art Phinney, who in 1998 coached Western softball to the school’s first national team title in any sport, Bill Roe, a Viking assistant track & field and cross country coach for 35 years while serving on national and international organizations for those sports, and Dr. John Utendale, the school’s Faculty Athletic Representative for 11 of his 28 years at Woodring College of Education, known for his achievements as an elite player and ice hockey activist during a groundbreaking career in that sport and higher education.
Phinney, Roe and Utendale will be inducted posthumously.
“This is an outstanding group we are inducting into the Western Athletics Hall of Fame,” said WWU Director of Athletics Steve Card. “Three student athletes who all had wonderful careers at Western and followed that up with outstanding accomplishments in their chosen fields, two legendary coaches and a trailblazing professor and ice hockey player. They are all very deserving of our most prestigious honor.”
The class of 2022 brings the hall’s membership to 155 over the 120-year history of athletics at Western.
The induction ceremony is the 45th for WWU. Its hall of fame is the second oldest among Pacific Northwest colleges and universities.
Rower Audrey Coon Schwind was slated to be inducted with Kaczor Berry, Koenen and Phinney in 2020 before the pandemic hit. Scheduling issues prevented her from being at the May 21 ceremony, but she will be inducted in 2023.
A full news release on the six inductees in to the WWU Athletics Hall of Fame can be viewed at wwuvikings.com/HOF.
