16 New Inductees to CV Sports Hall of Fame
Sixteen of Castro Valley’s best athletes, coaches, and sportscasters were honored Sunday night at the Redwood Canyon Event Center by being inducted into the 2020 Castro Valley Sports Hall of Fame.
Yes, that’s 2020’s class. They were chosen then by the Castro Valley Sports Foundation, but the pandemic prevented holding the formal induction and awards until now. The ceremony was postponed twice.
Well over 100 people turned out at the site, adjoining the Redwood Canyon Golf Course to cheer on the winners and to remember two inductees who had passed away before their induction.
Athletes and coaches representing 10 different sports joined a thoroughbred horse trainer and a TV sportscaster in receiving the awards.
Athletes inducted into the Hall of Fame were swimmer Carson Sand, soccer player Miranda Nild, team handball Olympian Steve Goss, tennis player Jamie Pawid Haas, basketball’s Denise Noleroth Bunger, runner Calvin Gaziano, golfer Matt Kern, football running back John Willits, runner Ayla Granados, multi-sport athlete Amanda Medrano, and the late runner Jack Welch.
Don Christiansen, “Coach Chris” at Laney and Chabot colleges, was one coach honored, along with Castro Valley High School track coach Dooney Jones and Castro Valley Track Club founder and coach Jim Phillips.
Thoroughbred horse trainer Robert “Bob” Hess, Sr., passed away in December 2020, before he could receive his award. Accepting the award for him, his son Robert Jr. described a horse trainer as “a coach for the four-legged” who interacted with the athlete in many of the same ways as people’s coaches do.
Sportscaster Monte Poole couldn’t attend the ceremony in person, either, but for a happier reason. He was broadcasting the Golden State Warriors last regular-season game Sunday night for NBC Sports Bay Area.
Inductees thanked many people for making their achievements possible. But one athlete thanked Castro Valley’s hills themselves.
“You have a lot of hills, a lot of trails. We did a lot of training in the hills,” said Calvin Gaziano, former Castro Valley High cross-country star, and current Fremont police sergeant. He became the first emergency responder inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Graziano said that while sports teach important lessons for life, so do one’s regular school classes.
“Those young people who don’t think they’ll ever use your high school math classes — you do.”
Gaziano said he uses them every day on his job — especially when doing blood spatter analysis at crime scenes, in which he’s a certified expert.
Former Moreau High School basketball star Denise Noleroth Bunger congratulated her daughter, who was attending the ceremony on her ninth birthday.
“She probably doesn’t realize how much basketball has shaped the mother and woman that I am,” Bunger said.
“The job of the coach is to trick you into believing you could do something you didn’t think you could do,” said Dooney Jones, Castro Valley High’s track and field coach. “But to believe you could do something you couldn’t, you have to become a person you haven’t been. “
Jones said that while he’s coached at the high school and at the Olympic trials, he considers his greatest coaching success to be with his daughters Bailey and Kennedy.
In December, Bailey set Chico State’s school record for three-pointers in a single basketball game, with 10, while Kennedy became the state champ in the triple jump in 2015, as a member of the Castro Valley High team, and set a new record with her last jump.
Nominations for the Hall of Fame were solicited from the public and a seven-person committee made selections. While the next induction won’t be until 2024, nominations are welcome now at the foundation’s website, castrovalleysportsfoundation.org.