One was Jim Patterson, a basketball player who helped lead Taft High School to the 1962 state championship, was an All-Mid-American Conference center at Miami University and played in the NBA with the Detroit Pistons.
Patterson remembered the early days. It was not a case of instant stardom.
“All of this basketball started when I was at Harrison Elementary (in Hamilton),” he said. “I couldn’t play a lick, but they put me on the team because I was 6 feet tall.”
Under the guidance of Taft head coach Marvin McCollum, Patterson became a standout, though he apparently didn’t realize it at first.
He said he had wanted God to put a hand on his shoulder and turn him into the best basketball player he could be. Patterson said he waited but never felt the hand.
Then one day, Patterson said, a Taft teammate approached him. “He said, ‘Patterson, you were terrible, but it’s almost as if God put his hand on you and made you a basketball player.’ ”
Chris Coffing won two state championships in wrestling, one at Lakota in 1978, one at Fairfield in 1979.
And yet, according to Coffing, “when I was young I was not an athlete. We were a family of very competitive people and I liked to watch TV.”
Coffing said he tried wrestling in order to protect himself when his older brother, Tom, also a wrestler, started trying out new moves on him. “It was pure self-defense,” he said.
Matt Clemens, who played on two state-championship football teams at Fenwick in 1973 and ‘74, said the secret to his athletic success was “hard work, dedication and teamwork. It sounds corny, but it really is true.”
Brooke Wyckoff of Lakota, who played eight years in the WNBA, said “it’s a great honor to be here, not only to accept this award, but to learn about so many great athletes in this area.”
Two of the Hall of Fame plaques were awarded posthumously, one to the late Aureal Imfeld (accepted by his daughter, Carol Hartman), another to the late Alvia “Alvie” Churchman (accepted by his son, David Churchman).
Another inductee, Chris Kingsbury, Hamilton High’s career scoring leader in basketball, was unable to attend due to the death of his grandmother.
Other inductees were Glenn O. Barker (Middletown), Kevin Lakes (New Miami), John Trump (Talawanda) and Hamilton Watkins (Middletown).
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