2013 Inductees

Jack Agnew has devoted over 50 years of volunteer service to baseball in Delaware. Agnew would easily be classified as a “baseball lifer,” from his playing days at Kingswood Community Center through high school at P.S. duPont, the U.S. Marine Corps, playing and managing in the Wilmington Semi-Pro League, managing in American Legion ball to finally spending over 41 years coaching and managing Midway Little League teams. Agnew's connection to Midway Little League led him to build some of Midway’s complex – including Midway's original T-ball field after he started that program in 1983 - and maintain most of Midway's complex that includes five fields. The Midway Little League major league competition plays on Jack Agnew Field, dedicated in 2012 to honor his many, many years of service to the league. Agnew, as a manager, produced seven Midway title teams (through 2012) and he managed the 2001 Midway Little League all-star team that won the Delaware state title and competed in the Mid-Atlantic Regional in Bristol, Conn. For his tireless efforts on behalf of Midway's Little League program, Agnew was inducted into the Delaware Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004. However, Agnew's contribution to sports in Delaware extended from the diamond to the hardcourt, where he spent 30 years as a referee with Board 11 of the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials (IAABO). Additionally, Agnew began serving as a volunteer with the Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame when the museum opened its doors in 2002. From 2006 through 2009, Agnew served on the Museum's Board of Governors. In 2011 he was part of a team of volunteers who created procedures to preserve the Museum's archives of inductees. For that work, Agnew was recognized as the DSMHOF Volunteer of the Year.

Ethel “Feffie” Barnhill was an all-around outstanding three-sport athlete at The Tatnall School in the 1960s. She was a four-year starter on the lacrosse team, and she was a three-year starter on both the field hockey and basketball teams. At Ursinus College, Barnhill played five sports, earning 13 letters. She capped her time at Ursinus by being named “Outstanding Senior Female Athlete.” Barnhill served 17 years as head lacrosse coach and director of lacrosse and field hockey at the College of William and Mary (1982-1998). Barnhill's lacrosse teams at W & M had 15 winning seasons, posting an overall mark of 159-89-1. Barnhill's squads were invited to the NCAA tournament six times; William and Mary has played in the NCAA tournament only once (through 2012) since. In 1982 Barnhill's inaugural squad went 11-2, won the Virginia AIAW state title and placed 5th in the AIAW Nationals. Barnhill coached at several Olympic Development Camps and was selected as assistant coach for the U.S. Women's Lacrosse World Cup winning team. She was appointed head coach of Scotland's National Lacrosse team. Barnhill was chairperson of the SE District of USFHA, (1981-85); President of the Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association, (1988-89); vice-president of the U.S. Women's Lacrosse Association, (1993-95); Chair-Elect of the U.S. Lacrosse, Inc. Board of Directors, (1998-2000); and on the Organizing Committee of the U-19 World Championships hosted by USL, Baltimore. Barnhill received the Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association Coaches Award in 2001; and was named Colonial Athletic Association Coach of the Year in 1998. She was inducted into the Virginia Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1997. Five years earlier, in 1992, Barnhill was inducted into the Ursinus College Hall of Fame.

Charley Burns’ sports career dates back to when he was a nine-year-old on the Lore School tumbling team where he became captain and all-around points winner as a sixth-grader. He then turned to swimming and diving, successfully competing for nearly a half-century. At Bayard Junior High, Burns was on the swim team for three years, serving as captain in 9th grade, a season during which he won all of his diving matches. Swimming was dropped as World War II approached, so Burns competed in AAU diving while also playing three seasons of basketball at Wilmington High School where he also lettered in track and served as leader corps captain. Burns entered the Army in 1942 and won a swimming medal in the China/Burma/India Theatre competition. He also boxed in the service going 17-1. After the Army, Burns studied art and gave a few cartoons to Wilmington News-Journal sports editor, Al Cartwright. It opened a new chapter in Burns’ life - featured sports cartoonist. Many of his works for the Journal are displayed proudly at the DSMHOF. Notable Burns sports caricatures: Dave Nelson, Jerome Brown, Bunny Vosters and horse racing's Greek Song. Burns founded the Wilmington Swim Club with its swimmers and divers donating fees for youth scholarships. At age 58, Burns entered the U.S. Senior Diving Championships and captured a gold medal. His career also included coaching gymnastics for years at the Wilmington Central YMCA. Burns was also one of the founders of the Wilmington Touch Football League in the '60s; the league still competes. Burns is a recipient of the Delaware Sports Writers & Broadcasters Herm Reitzes Award for his many contributions to sports in Delaware. In 1997 Burns was inducted into the Wilmington High “Wall of Fame.” His resume also includes serving as vice-president of the DSMHOF along with many hours of volunteer service to the organization.

Fillmore Clifton left a big footprint as a player and later as a coach in Sussex County, Delaware over a 30-year period. Clifton was a standout in three sports - soccer, basketball and baseball – for the Lewes High School Pirates from 1930 to 1934. In all three sports Clifton was team captain as both a junior and senior. His leadership skills were apparent to his fellow students with Clifton serving as class president as well as president of the Student Council. Clifton took his considerable athletic talents to West Chester (Pa.) University where he swapped football for soccer while also continuing to play basketball and baseball. Clifton captained the 1938 Golden Rams baseball team to a winning record. Clifton's coaching career started right out of college and, for the 1941-42 school year, he was head coach of all boys’ sports at Bridgeville (De.) High School – introducing 11-man football – while also coaching girls’ basketball. World War II intervened and Clifton served three years in the Army. When he returned to Bridgeville in 1945, he re-started the football program (dropped during the war) and his boys basketball team went 15-1. For better than two seasons, from 1949 to 1951, Clifton's girls hoops team ran off a 36-game winning streak. Clifton's Bridgeville football team, led by All-State guard Paul Myers, went undefeated in 1950. Clifton had another All-State performer, end Dick Lewis, on his 8-1 1953 squad. When the Henlopen Conference was formed in 1959, Bridgeville took the football title. Today when visiting football teams arrive at Woodbridge High School – formerly Bridgeville – they play in the stadium named for Fillmore Clifton. And, at eachWoodbridge graduation, an outstanding senior athlete – boy or girl – receives a scholarship that carries the name Fillmore Clifton.

Jeffrey S. Cooper, a Conrad High School and University of Delaware graduate, is a longtime athletic trainer for the Philadelphia Phillies whose career achievements place him at the pinnacle of his profession. Cooper retired from full-time duties with the Phillies, but continues to serve as a consultant on potentially serious injuries. Cooper has traveled a long way since his student days at Delaware, where he was student trainer for the Blue Hens football team. In 2003, he was named the National Athletic Trainers Association Most Outstanding Trainer of the Year. Cooper served as head athletic trainer for three major league baseball All-Star games, and received the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society’s Major League Service Award in 1997. Cooper is an inductee of the Pennsylvania Athletic Trainers Hall of Fame and the Delaware Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame. Cooper served as the Phillies’ assistant athletic trainer from 1976 through 1980. He was promoted to head athletic trainer and held that job from 1981 through 2006. Cooper also worked as a trainer in the Phillies’ minor league system from 1970 through 1973. Cooper, Dallas Green, Brandy Davis and Ruly Carpenter are the only Delawareans with World Series rings from the Phillies’ 1980 championship season. Cooper has received many other professional awards, including the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society’s Training Staff of the Year citation in 1994 and the University of Delaware Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement in 1993. He has written numerous articles on athletic training techniques and theories published in professional journals. Cooper is a founding member and past president of the Baseball Athletic Trainers Society and was inducted into the U.S. National Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame in 2012.

Monick Foote was the national high school basketball player of the year while at Sanford School and became an all-conference college player who went on to play professionally. Foote was voted first-team Delaware All-State in 1992, '93 and '94; in both '93 and '94, she was Gatorade State Player of the Year. Foote led Sanford to the state championship in 1994 when she was named the Delaware Player of the Year and the Gatorade National High School Player of the Year. She was also named a national Parade Magazine first-team All-American. Foote scored 1,609 points at Sanford, among the highest total points by a girl in Delaware history. Sanford's record over her four seasons was 77-12. As a freshman at the University of Virginia in 1995, Foote tied the NCAA Tournament record with seven 3-pointers in a second-round game vs. Florida. She was one of the Atlantic Coast Conference's top sophomores in 1996. Foote helped carry the Cavaliers to the NCAA Tournament regional finals in her first two years. Her junior year was wiped out by injury, so she red-shirted and then Foote, as team captain her senior season, rebounded to make the ACC all-conference third team in 1998-99. Over her collegiate career, Foote scored 1,315 points, averaged 35.3 percent in three-point shooting, made the all-ACC freshman team and was named to the all-ACC academic team her senior season. She wore number 13 throughout her career in Charlottesville. Foote played professionally for several years in Israel. In 2000, she was named Delaware's 1990s Player of the Decade in a poll of coaches, writers and referees. The same poll named her first-team all-defensive team for the 1990s. The website Delaware Girls Basketball included Foote in its first “Great Players of the Past” in 2008.

Dave Hurm was a four-sport star athlete at Newark High School in the early 1950s who went on to have a stellar college football career at Duke University. Hurm earned 11 letters as a Yellowjacket: three each in track, baseball and basketball and two in football. In track Hurm specialized in the high jump and shot put and was also part of the 'Jackets’ relay teams. Even though strong and muscular, Hurm was talented enough in the high jump to challenge for top honors in state and county championship meets. In the shot put, Hurm again was a serious challenger for top honors at both county and state title meets. On the baseball diamond, Hurm had a great glove as a first baseman and was one of Newark's top hitters, batting .357 his senior year. On the court, Hurm averaged more than 20 points per game his senior season, ranking third in New Castle County and earning him second-team All-State. Over Hurm's junior and senior seasons, Newark went 31-8 on the court. But it was on the football field that Hurm really excelled - at both offensive end and defensive back. Hurm was first team All-State in 1952, his senior year. Hurm's gridiron efforts at Newark landed him in Durham, N.C. where, after playing on the freshman team as required at that time, he started at offensive end for the varsity Blue Devils in 1955, 1956 and 1957. Hurm earned All-American honorable mention from United Press International, was voted to the SAE All-America squad, honorable mention All-Atlantic Coast Conference, and he topped off his career at Duke when the Blue Devils put a scare into the mighty 4th ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the 1958 Orange Bowl game before the Sooners pulled away in the fourth quarter for a 48-21 victory. Hurm also played two years (freshman and sophomore) of baseball at Duke.

Rhondale Jones is recognized by many as the most accomplished female sprinter in Delaware high school history. Jones dominated Delaware high school track for four years, then was a Division III All-American who led her team to national championships. Jones won 12 individual outdoor state championships as a student at Delcastle (two at 100-meter high hurdles, three at 100 meters, three at 200 meters and four at 400 meters). She set state records at 100-meter hurdles and 200 meters and, 14 years after graduation, she still held the state high school 200 meter record of 24.17. She was named the state’s outstanding indoor track athlete of the year all four years in high school (1995 thru '98), and was the state’s outstanding outdoor track athlete as a junior and senior. At Lincoln University, she was a 16-time Division III All-American, winning nine individual national championships – three each at the 100-meter hurdles, 100-meter dash and 200-meter dash. She led Lincoln to national championships in 1999 and 2000. In 1999 Jones set a pair of NCAA Division III outdoor records: 11.64 at 100 meters and 23.72 at 200 meters. As of 2012, Jones’ 200-meter mark was still number one. Jones was named the nation’s outstanding Division III track athlete in 2001 and the indoor 60-meter division record she set, 7.51, is still the number to beat. Jones was inducted into the Delaware Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2009. She was named the outstanding Division III female track athlete of the first 25 years of NCAA women’s competition, an honor bestowed as part of the NCAA’s 25th Anniversary of Women’s Championships celebration.

Dr. Arthur “Art” Mayer is one of the most accomplished swimmers in University of Delaware history and the owner of numerous local, regional, national and world records in the Masters Swimming Program where he has competed for more than three decades. In 2010, the Delaware Senior Olympics named Mayer Delaware Senior Athlete of the Year. He has held several DSO age group records. Mayer's achievements are even more remarkable if you consider that when he arrived at Delaware he could not swim and suffers from asthma! As a freshman, Mayer set a trio of Delaware pool records. He was unbeaten as a sophomore, breaking his own Hens pool mark in the 200-yard backstroke several times, then set a new pool record in the distance at Franklin & Marshall College. Mayer outdid himself as a junior, setting more pool records on the road and set two records - 150 IM and 200 backstroke - in the Middle Atlantic Conference championships. Mayer capped his UD career by being the first Hen to compete in the NCAA swimming championships. Mayer received a degree in veterinary medicine and, due to work, did not swim competitively again until 1975. He was recruited by former Delaware coach, Harry Rawstrom, to begin a Masters Swimming Program at the school. Mayer formed the program and threw himself into competing in Masters events; in 1988 he was part of a medley team that set a national and world record at 200 meters; in '89 Mayer set a Canadian age group record in the 100 backstroke. Mayer gave back to swimming in a number of ways including by being the Delaware Valley Masters Program chairman for 12 years. Mayer served as track vet at Brandywine Raceway and head track vet at Delaware Park in the '50s and '60s. In 1993, Mayer was named Vet of the Year by the Delaware Veterinary Medical Association for his “outstanding service, unselfish devotion and untiring efforts in the practice of veterinary medicine.”

A standout at Georgetown's Sussex Central High School, Petitgout was a scholarship player at the University of Notre Dame under coaches Lou Holtz and Bob Davie. His collegiate career was so outstanding, Petitgout was a first round pick in the 1999 NFL draft, selected 19th overall by the New York Giants. Petitgout played nine seasons in the NFL as an offensive tackle, eight with the Giants and his final season in 2007 with Tampa Bay. Over those nine seasons he started 110 games, including the 2001 Super Bowl for New York. Sports Illustrated picked Petitgout to its All-Pro first team after the 2001 season. At Notre Dame, Petitgout redshirted in 1994 then, over the next four seasons, grew from being a special teams performer to starting 21 out of 23 games at offensive tackle for the Fighting Irish his last two seasons. After his senior season Petitgout was voted to the All-Independents team by the Football News; selected to play in the Senior Bowl All-Star game and was one of six Notre Dame seniors invited to the NFL Combine. When he was picked 19th in the draft, Bob Davie, Petitgout's coach his last two seasons at Notre Dame said, “Some people didn't think Luke could even play football (at) Notre Dame. His pick says a lot about the hard work he put in here at Notre Dame.” Petitgout was a first team All-State selection as a senior and a multiple All-Henlopen Conference pick. He was selected for the 1994 Delaware Blue-Gold All-Star Game and played in the '94 High School All-American Prep Game. Sussex Central High retired Petitgout's football jersey (No. 90) in 1999. Petitgout remembered his roots when he went to the NFL, wearing uniform No. 77 in honor of the Georgetown Fire Company; the fire company voted him an associate/honorary member. He also financed the weight room when the new Sussex Central High School was built.

A record-setting hurdler and All-State basketball player at Dover High School, Ukee Washington went on to become basketball captain at the University of Richmond and then a respected sports journalist. In basketball, he was named three times to the All-Henlopen Conference team and as a senior in 1976, was first team All-State, and was named to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s 15-man all-area team. Washington graduated as the seventh leading scorer in Delaware high school history with 1,305 points over three years. In track, Washington twice won the maximum three championships – two in the hurdles, one in the mile relay – in his junior and senior years. He broke the state record in all three events. Washington's 14.28 in the high hurdles was the state record for seven years, and his 37.85 in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles lasted a lot longer - 17 years. Washington joined Henry Boss, Eric Caulley and Ron Jackson in a mile relay performance of 3:17.49 at the University of Maryland Meet of Champions on June 1, 1975; that standard has only been bettered once in Delaware history. Washington was inducted into the Delaware Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2004. A voice and presence that took him around the world as a teenager, when he performed in Russia, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Mexico with the Philadelphia Boys Choir, led Washington to broadcasting. After working at WSB (Atlanta) and WBBH (Fort Myers), Washington joined KYW-TV, Channel 3 in Philadelphia in 1986, where he has worked ever since as an anchor and reporter in sports, news and features. In 2008, Washington was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame.