The National Track and Field Hall of Fame is a museum operated by The Armory Foundation in conjunction with USA Track & Field. [1] It is located within the Armory Foundation (the former Fort Washington Avenue Armory) at 216 Fort Washington Avenue, between 168th and 169th Streets, in Washington Heights, in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The stated goal of the Hall is to reflect upon, appreciate, and honor the past by saluting Americans who have made important contributions to the history of Track and Field. [2] Inductees to the Hall of Fame include athletes, coaches, contributors, officials, event directors, journalists and administrators. [3] USA Track & Field has been inducting members into the Hall since 1974. Currently there are 254 people enshrined. [4]
The National Track and Field Hall of Fame was founded in Charleston, West Virginia in 1974. The museum moved to Indianapolis in 1985 when it came under the auspices of USA Track & Field, the national governing body for the sport of track and field in the United States. [5] The Indianapolis museum closed in 1996 when the exhibits were moved for the 1996 Centennial Olympics in Atlanta. The exhibits were then displayed in Los Angeles before touring across the nation as a traveling museum until 2002 when The Armory building was chosen as its permanent location. [6]
Exhibits include the original 1976 Nike Waffle Trainers and a singlet and shorts worn by Hall of Famer Steve Prefontaine. [7]
The nomination criteria differs for the type of inductee as follows:
Only open class accomplishments are considered. In order to be considered, an athlete must have participated in an open competition at least three years prior to consideration, except when an athlete has reached forty years of age, and must fall into one or more of the following criteria: [2]
To be nominated, a coach must have been retired for at least one year from active full-time coaching, except where the nominated person has coached for thirty-five (35) years or more, and must fall into the following criteria: [2]
In order to be nominated as a Contributor, the nominee must have served the Athletics community with special distinction and worked within the athletics community in its best interests in an outstanding manner for at least twenty (20) years. Contributors may also be nominated for having achieved other outstanding accomplishments. [2]
Also under USATF is the Masters Hall of Fame, created in 1996 and the Officials Hall of Fame created in 2007. The membership of those two halls are selected by separate committees of those divisions of USATF for separate achievements in those divisions. [8] [9] As such, there is some duplication of names. Those members currently exist as a list of honored names, but have no physical representation at the hall in New York City.
Each February, the National Track & Field Board and Screening Committee begins to actively seek nominations which are due by May 1 each year. [10] On May 15, all nominations (including those carry-over nominations from previous years which have not been under consideration for the maximum five (5) years) are compiled by the national staff of USA Track & Field. All nominations are then reviewed by the Hall of Fame Screening Committee which is charged with forwarding the best candidates eligible to the voters. The membership of the committee is confidential. The committee has full authority to make nominations to create the best ballot possible. [2] The Staff Coordinator for the Hall of Fame creates the ballot of ten (10) nominees (the number of nominees may be increased for equity in gender, discipline, and era of competition or service, but will never number more than twelve (12) nominees) and accompanying documentation (biographies, etc.) by June 30. [10] The ballot is then reviewed by the President of the Hall of Fame and chair of the Screening Committee before being forwarded to the voters near the end of July. The voters include inducted Hall of Famers, the Hall of Fame committee members and selected members of the Track and Field Writers of America. [2] Each voter has one vote and any voter who fails to cast a ballot for two (2) consecutive years may be removed from the list of eligible voters until they request and cast a ballot in a subsequent year. All ballots must be returned to the accounting firm responsible for tabulation of votes by August 29. [10] In the beginning of September, Accounting firm, chair of the Screening Committee, and President of the Board review the ballots and declare the inductees who are announced later in the month. [10]
Located at The Armory Foundation, at 216 Fort Washington Avenue in Washington Heights, New York the museum is split into three levels. The first level contains main lobby, the Hall of Fame Theater (featuring a film simply called "Welcome to The Hall of Fame", produced by Peter Frankfurt [1] ) and the Hall of Fame History Gallery, where the Olympic Moment film produced by Bud Greenspan can be viewed. [1] The second level holds the Hall of Fame Atrium, the Hall of Fame Champion Gallery and the Fred Lebow Marathon Hall . The third level holds the Hall of Fame Gallery featuring a 40-foot (12 m)-long etched glass wall with the names of all the inductees engraved upon it. Through the glass wall visitors can see the 65,000-square-foot (6,000 m2) arena that is home to the largest indoor collegiate and high school invitational events in the world. [1]
The following table lists all persons who have been inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.
The Veterans Committee is the popular name of various committees of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum that elect participants other than recently retired players.
Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee is a retired American track and field athlete, ranked among the all-time greatest athletes in the heptathlon as well as long jump. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals in those two events at four different Olympic Games. Sports Illustrated for Women magazine voted Joyner-Kersee the Greatest Female Athlete of All-Time. She is on the board of directors for USA Track & Field (U.S.A.T.F.), the national governing body of the sport.
Robert Eugene Richards was an American athlete, minister, and politician. He made three U.S. Olympic Teams in two events: the 1948, 1952, and 1956 Summer Olympics as a pole vaulter and as a decathlete in 1956. He won gold medals in pole vault in both 1952 and 1956, becoming the only male two-time champion in the event in Olympic history.
USA Track & Field (USATF) is the United States national governing body for the sports of track and field, cross country running, road running and racewalking. The USATF was known between 1979 and 1992 as The Athletics Congress (TAC) after its spin off from the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), which governed the sport in the US through most of the 20th century until the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 dissolved its responsibility. Based in Indianapolis, USATF is a non-profit organization with a membership of more than 130,000. The organization has three key leadership positions: CEO Max Siegel, Board of Directors Chair Steve Miller, and elected president Vin Lananna. U.S. citizens and permanent residents can be USATF members, but permanent residents can only participate in masters events in the country and they cannot win USATF medals, prize money or score points for a team, per World Athletics regulations.
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 2007 proceeded according to revised rules enacted in 2001. The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) held an election to select from among recent players, resulting in the induction of Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr.
Payton Jordan was the head coach of the 1968 United States Olympic track and field team, one of the most powerful track teams ever assembled, which won a record twenty-four medals, including twelve golds. He was born in Whittier, California. Jordan was exceedingly successful as a collegiate track coach for a decade at Occidental College and for 23 years at Stanford University. A star three-sport athlete in his youth, Jordan more recently became one of the most dominant track athletes of all time, as a sprinter, in senior divisions. Jordan died of cancer at his home in Laguna Hills, California on February 5, 2009.
Aeriwentha ("Mae") Faggs Starr was an American athlete who mainly competed in the sprint events. She graduated from Bayside High School, and then went to Tennessee State University to run under Hall of Fame coach Ed Temple.
Allan "Al" Dean Feuerbach is a former American track and field athlete. He competed in the shot put at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics and finished in fifth and fourth place, respectively. He missed the 1980 Games due to the boycott by the United States. He did however receive one of 461 Congressional Gold Medals created especially for the spurned athletes.
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 2010 proceeded according to rules enacted in 2001 and revised in 2007. As always, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) voted by mail to select from a ballot of recent players; one player was elected, Andre Dawson.
Linda Somers-Smith is an American long-distance runner who is a two-time United States national champion in the marathon. Somers competed in the marathon at the 1996 Summer Olympics. She also won the 1992 Chicago Marathon (2:37:41) and the 1993 California International Marathon (2:34:11). Somers is notable as she is one of the very few athletes who has continued running at the elite level since she turned Pro in 1984 into the transition to Masters athlete. She continues to win and place in Open competition, even at the age of 50, all the while as a practicing attorney.
Bob Larsen is a Hall of Fame Track and field athletics coach, known largely for coaching distance runners, though he has had success coaching across a full range of events. His most notable athlete is Mebrahtom Keflezighi, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist in the marathon. Building on that success, Keflezighi won the men's division of the 2009 New York Marathon, and the 2014 Boston Marathon. Previous to that Larsen coached the UCLA cross country and then track teams between 1979 and his retirement in 1999.
The Southern California Striders is a track and field athletics club based in Los Angeles, California. From its foundation in 1955 through the 1980s it was an elite club producing numerous national and Olympic champions. For a time in the 1970s it was called the Tobias Striders for sponsorship reasons. From the 1990s to 2006 the club was restricted to masters athletics and still produces national champions in older age classes. After 2006 it became a nonprofit open to all ages.
The USATF Masters Hall of Fame is the Masters section of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. It is intended to select worthy athletes from the various divisions of Masters athletics involved in the sports of track and field, road running and race walking. They are selected from nominees proposed by the Hall of Fame Committee, a joint committee under the supervision of the Masters Track and Field (MTF) and Masters Long Distance Running (LDR) committees of USATF, the current national governing body supervising the sport in the United States. First Class was 1996. Voters include the members of the Hall of Fame committee, the Executive Boards of the MTF and LDR and the members of the Hall of Fame itself.
Tom Moore was a National Track and Field Hall of Fame track and field promoter, known for his decades of service as meet director of the Modesto Relays.
Joetta Clark Diggs is a retired American track and field champion, specializing in middle distance running. She ran for more than 28 consecutive years never missing an indoor or outdoor season, with her races being in the 800 meters and 1500 meters. A 4-time Olympian in 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000, she competed in every outdoor USA Championships or Olympic trials between 1979 and 2000, winning five outdoor championships. Indoors, she was in the national championship race in 18 of the last 19 years, winning seven times. Clark Diggs was ranked in the top 10 in the world since 1991. Moreover, in 1998 at age 36, she was ranked number four in the world. This was her best ranking out of six such appearances.
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 2013 took place according to rules most recently revised in July 2010. As in the past, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) voted by mail to select from a ballot of recently retired players, with results announced on January 9, 2013. The Pre-Integration Era Committee, the last of three new voting committees established during the July 2010 rules change to replace the more broadly defined Veterans Committee, convened early in December 2012 to select from a ballot of players and non-playing personnel who made their greatest contributions to the sport prior to 1947, called the "Pre-Integration Era" by the Hall of Fame.
Sandi Morris is an American pole vault record holder. She won the silver medal in the pole vault event at the 2016 Summer Olympics. She also won silver at the pole vault event at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics and another silver at the 2019 World Championships in Athletics. In 2018 she won gold at the World Indoor Championships. Morris has a personal best vault of 4.95 m indoor, set on March 12, 2016, in Portland, Oregon. She matched this height at the 2018 World Indoor Champships when setting a new championship record. July 23, 2016, Morris cleared 4.93 m at American Track League in Houston at Rice University breaking Jennifer Suhr's American outdoor record in the pole vault. Morris cleared 5.00 m at 2016 IAAF Diamond League Memorial Van Damme in Brussels on September 9, 2016, to set the U.S. women's outdoor pole vault record.
Emily Sisson is an American distance runner who holds the North American record in the marathon, set Oct. 9, 2022, at the 2022 Chicago Marathon, where she ran 2:18:29 to finish second, becoming only the second non-African-born woman to break 2:19. She also previously owned the American record in the half marathon.
The USATF Masters Indoor Championships is an annual track and field competition which serves as the national indoor championship for the United States for athletes in masters age groups. Organized by USA Track & Field, the national governing body for the sport, the competition was first held in 1975. Athletes compete in 5-year age groups, beginning from 25 and up to 105. Traditionally limited to athletes over 35, a "pre-masters" group was introduced from 2020 onwards to encourage post-collegiate athletes over 25 to continue competing.
Charles Allie is an American masters athletics sprinter. He has set numerous masters world records in sprint events from 200 to 400 meters.
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