PORT ANGELES — Not even a 20-minute power outage could dampen the spirit at the seventh Port Angeles Roughriders Hall of Fame dinner held Saturday night at Civic Field in Port Angeles.
Ten individual athletes and three teams were honored during the induction ceremony that was attended by more than 500 people. A slight glitch with a power outage was no big issue as the lights and audio came back and the event wrapped up an hour or so before Saturday night’s wild lightning and thunder storm began.
The theme of the night was community and what a special community Port Angeles is in shaping its history of outstanding athletes.
Burdette Greeny, class of 1993, got one of the bigger reactions of the night. He played baseball at Port Angeles and went on to play at Washington State, eventually being drafted by the New York Mets. He then became a volleyball coach at Washington State and later the University of West Virginia.
Greeny said one of the biggest lessons he learned from athletics is humility.
“I honestly don’t believe I’m deserving of this,” he said. “Humility is super important.”
Greeny said West Virginia is very much like Port Angeles, a place where community is important. He hadn’t been back to Port Angeles for a while and drove around town to check out his old haunts. He had traveled the world as part of his athletics career, from Serbia to Iceland to Mount Ararat in Turkey. None of them can compare to Port Angeles, he said.
“You need to realize what a special place Port Angeles is,” he said. “This place is absolutely special.”
Derek Church, class of 1993, set three Port Angeles swimming records and went on to BYU, where he set more school swim records.
“Looking at photos [for this event], I realized that I spent 20 years of my life basically naked,” he said, joking that he considered showing up for the dinner in a speedo and a tie. He said sports gave him opportunities he never thought he would have and allowed him to swim in China and at the University of Notre Dame.
Liz Money Weber was a soccer star from the class of 2002. She was the Olympic League MVP her junior and senior years at Port Angeles High School, then went on to Oregon State and was a Pac-10 honorable mention for three years.
“As long as I remember, I loved to compete,” she said. “My dad fueled my competitive drive by teaching me humility. I would be out running and he’d be driving along telling her to ‘pick up your knees. Pick up your pace,’” she said.
Jesse Schouten was a champion singles tennis player who graduated in 1999. He went on to be named the athlete of the year at Skagit Valley College and was named the NWAC coach and player of the year. He moved on to a successful pro, semi-pro and coaching career and is also a hitting partner for champion players such as Roger Federer and Andy Murray.
“Life goes so fast. It’s not often when you get those moments that slow down so you can realize what a journey it’s been,” he said.
Julie Urfer Shevlin, class of 1992, was an all-state gymnastics athlete, finishing second in the state in the floor exercise. Because her mother, Jan Urfer (also a member of the hall of fame), was a gymnastics coach, she got to go on the trips to school meets and got the opportunity to watch older girls compete.
The biggest thing she learned “is that the older girls fall down much more than you don’t. I watched those girls fall down and get back up again.”
Kiah Jones Sullivan is one of the youngest people inducted from the class of 2012. She was the Olympic League MVP in volleyball in 2011 and led the Riders to two state tournament appearances. She went on to play for Central Washington.
“My parents shaped me into the athlete I am,” she said. “They followed me all over the Pacific Northwest and up to Alaska and even Italy.”
Jones Sullivan said one of the things she learned from sports is “to be happy and excited when a teammate does well. I try to practice that today with family and friends and neighbors when they do well.”
Mike Madison, class of 1977, is the fourth member of his family to be inducted. His niece Jessica and nephews James and Jon have all been inducted, primarily for basketball. Madison was the state’s second-leading scorer in 1977, averaging 25.1 points a game, making the all-state team and the Olympic League MVP.
Madison went on to play for Concordia College and was the head coach at Shoreline Christian for six years.
Madison said there have been so many great basketball players and coaches at Port Angeles High School over the years such as Mike Clayton, Sherri Felton, Bernie Fryer, Lee Sinnes and his niece and nephews.
“This was a special place to play basketball,” he said.
He said his brother Guy Madison was also a great player.
“This is the first I ever got to beat him. I’m the guy up here and he’s the one sitting down,” Madison said.
Barry Wilcox was a champion cyclist at Port Angeles but his life and career changed when he suffered a spinal cord injury and fractured in a traffic accident, leaving him in a wheelchair. He later became a champion hand cyclist, winning a bronze medal at the world paracycling championships in Scotland in 2023. He is also an instructor in exercise and nutritional sciences at Park University in Gilbert, Ariz.
“I get a chance to inspire students athletes and they inspire me,” he said.
Cameron Braithwaite, a state long jump champion, is another one of the more recent graduates from 2012. He went on to become a champion decathlete at the University of Puget Sound. He was humbled to be part of the history of the hall of fame and meeting people from past classes.
“I’m so honored to be here. There’s been so many good athletes here over the years,” he said.
Heather Lucas Barlow could not attend and teammate Monica Barlow Zuckett accepted on her behalf. Lucas Barlow is a 1985 graduate who was inducted for track and field. She held six Port Angeles track records at one time and still holds the school record in the 1,500 meters. She was an All-American in track and cross country at Pacific Lutheran and won the Seattle Half-Marathon and the Appleton, Wis., Marathon.
Teams
Three teams were also inducted, including Port Angeles’ first swim team from 1967 and 1968. The 1967 team finished second in the state in its first year of existence, losing only to Wilson High School in Tacoma, which won 24 straight state titles. Greg Galles and Robin Allen, both members of that team, and coach Don Fairbairn, were all inducted in previous hall of fame classes.
Dale Ridgway, a member of the team said “the stars just aligned” for that first-year team. “We were all quick.
“We performed excellently against big city programs. We were way off the I-5 corridor,” Ridgway said.
Emcee Bruce Skinner pointed out that back in those days, if an athlete in the Seattle-Tacoma area along the I-5 corridor was great at swimming, they ended up attending Wilson High School.
Also inducted was the 1982-85 cross-country team which went 23-0 in league meets and four league championships.
Robin Mather, a member of that team, said that back in those days as part of training, the coaches “drove us out to the country and we had to make our way eight miles back to the high school.”
“Those four years with those teams and those ladies shaped who I am today,” said Teresa Bower, another member of the team.
Finally, also inducted was the 1972 two-mile relay team of Steve Phillips, Dave Rains, Robin Chavis and Rick Melvin. This team set a state record in the indoor two-mile at the Seattle Center Coliseum, now the site of Climate Pledge Arena.
Melvin was only 15 at the time.
“14,000 people [in Seattle Center Coliseum] is pretty intimidating, but once the gun goes off, your nerves go away,” he said. The team finished fourth at a meet the week before Seattle and Melvin that did help motivate them.
“We had a little revenge going,” he said.
Sequim High School is joining Port Angeles High School with its own athletic hall of fame. The Sequim induction ceremony will be held Sept. 14 at the Cedars at Dungeness.
