Pitchin with Pritch: Hall of Fame event worth the time

Our first two weeks in Lincoln have been busy ones and actually started to make the reasons we decided to move a little bit clearer. 

We have been to three flag football games, baby sat with our granddaughter a couple of times and she has already stayed all night once. 

Last Friday, I took my first road trip with our son Troy as he was covering the Malcom and Louisville football game in Louisville. 

Got to see some parts of Nebraska for the first time.  We saw a pretty good football game and Malcom won so it made it even better. 

I also made a trip to the NSAA building and visited with the people that were there and spent about an hour with Chuck Johnson in the Hall of Fame portion of the building. 

They have made a lot of improvements in the Hall of Fame and if you are a sports fan, that should be a stop on your schedule when you come to Lincoln. 

It doesn’t cost anything to visit and it is filled with all kinds of sports stuff that have become outstanding moments or athletes in Nebraska.

On Sunday, I attended the Nebraska High School Hall of Fame induction for this year’s new Hall of Fame class.

It was nice to see some old friends and to visit with the people you knew that were being inducted into the Hall of Fame for 2021. 

This year some of the people going in included Tim Higgins as an official. When I came back to coaching in the late 80s, Tim was the head basketball coach at North Platte St. Pats. 

He was a very good coach. 

A little later, he got into officiating and I thought he was one of the best officials that was working in western Nebraska. 

He was the only official elected to the HOF this year and we had to kid him a little about that, saying there was a limit on the number of officials they would let in per year. 

Higgins was a good high school official, reffed the SPVA for a lot of years,  worked state tournaments and worked college games. 

 Also going in this year was Larry Porter, who spent 40 years in a writing career at the Omaha World Herald. 

Porter spent a lot of time fishing and had a number of friends in Perkins County. It was good to spend a little time with him also. 

We did a little “Roast” when he turned the sports writing over to Stu Pospisil and he got back at me anyway when he was one of the roasters at my next to last retirement.

Malcolm had a HOF coach in Bob Hoyer who coached cross country at Malcolm for 36 years, winning 10 state championships with the boys and picking up four runner-up trophies with the girls. 

Perkins County had a person going in with Rhonda McCormick Perlinger inducted as an athlete. 

She was unable to make the trip but was recognized by one of the HOF directors reading a message that she had sent. 

The program was scheduled to run for two hours but some of the inductees got started and had a difficult time in ending their speech. 

I happened to be sitting with Paul Forch, a HOF coach that coached basketball at Lincoln East. 

We both, almost at the same time, mentioned that when we went in, they told us to hold the speeches to five minutes or less.

I think the first person must have hit 15-minute mark. There were 20 going into the HOF and finally the 15th inductee started his speech with “What happened to the 3 to 5 min. rule?”

 So instead of two hours it went for nearly three hours.Still, it was a great day and glad I went.

Now, how about them Cornhuskers? Enough said. Still have faith that they will get it worked out.