State's first MLB player to horseshoe star: Vermont Sports Hall of Fame 2025 class

State’s first MLB player to horseshoe star: Vermont Sports Hall of Fame 2025 class

Posted by author January 30, 2025 Sports

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The 12th class of the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame features inductees ranging from Olympians and high school stars to a Major League baseball player and award-winning broadcaster, the VSHOF’s Board of Directors announced in a news release.

The VSHOF’s Board of Directors unveiled its 2025 class Wednesday afternoon. The 13 new members will officially be enshrined during a celebration banquet on Saturday, April 26.

The induction dinner begins with a 5:30 p.m. reception at Delta Marriott Burlington Hotel on Williston Road in South Burlington. Ticket information for the 2025 dinner will be available soon on the VSHOF website at www.vermontsportshall.com.

Last year: Vermont Sports Hall of Fame 2024 class

Proceeds from the dinner and raffles will benefit Prevent Child Abuse Vermont, the VSHOF’s designated charity. Previous dinners have raised over $37,000 for the organization, a news release stated.

This year’s class brings the hall’s membership total to 143 since the first class was inducted in 2012. The inductees now represent 60 towns in the Green Mountain State and 13 of the state’s 14 counties are represented. The class was selected by three groups: the 15-member VSHOF board of directors, a statewide sports advisory panel and the previous inductees, the news release said.

This year’s class (courtesy of the VSHOF release):

Nini Wuensch Anger

Gymnastics

Nini Wuensch Anger was a three-time individual high school champion for Colchester before graduating in 1977 following her junior year. She competed at the NCAA Division I level at Southern Illinois before she became a longtime coach and official in Vermont. The Vermont Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association voted her its 1976-77 High School Athlete of the Year and she was featured in Sports Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd.

Debra Brown

Horseshoe pitching

Debra Brown has proven to be one the top pitcher in the state, country and the world. Brown’s a 24-time state champion with nine New England crowns. She also has posted 10 top-10 finishes at worlds, highlighted by a world championship in 2015. She has been honored with three halls of fame inductions and many state, regional and national awards. She has been instrumental in the development of the successful Sodbusters Horseshoe Pitching Club in Addison County and has coached or mentored many junior players throughout the years.

Kyle Dezotell

Soccer/Nordic skiing

A record-setting high school and college soccer scorer, Kyle Dezotell was also an excellent Nordic skier, and is a successful NCAA men’s soccer head coach. He was the 1998 Gatorade player of the year at North Country Union High setting a new Metro Division scoring record (36 goals) and leading the Falcons to the Division I state title. In the winters, he was a Vermont state and New England champion in Nordic skiing. He went on to Middlebury setting program marks in goals, assists and points, and he helped the Panthers to their first-ever NESCAC title in 2000. After graduation he has been the head coach at VSU-Johnson, Norwich, Manhattanville, Ithaca and currently at Tufts leading his teams to a combined seven Division III NCAA tournaments.

Lou DiMasi III

Hockey

The state’s top high school player in 1999, Lou DiMasi went on to a standout career at Norwich, twice earning first-team Division III all-American honors, and went on to play four seasons of professional hockey. At Burlington High School, he was the 1999 Burlington Free Press Mr. Hockey and led the Seahorses to the Division I state title. At Norwich, he was a two-time All-American defenseman, captained the Cadets to the 2003 NCAA Division III national title and was inducted into its hall of fame in 2014. He went to play five seasons as a pro, two in the U.S. minor leagues and three in Europe. A youth and high school coach since he returned to Vermont, since 2011 he’s been an integral part of the successful Pond Hockey Classic on Malletts Bay.

Carlie Geer

Rowing

A 1980 graduate of Dartmouth where she was an outstanding rower on the crew team, Carlie Geer was a two-time Olympian earning a silver medal in single sculls in Los Angeles in 1984. She also was named to the 1980 Olympic Team in double sculls with her sister Judy but the U.S. did not compete. She also competed at three world championships, rowing double sculls in 1981 and quad sculls in 1982-83. Gear is the first Vermont female to win a medal in the Summer Olympics. Last year, she was inducted in the National Rowing Foundation’s National Rowing Hall of Fame.

Jim Holland

Ski jumping

A six-time national champion ski jumper, Jim Holland competed in the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics. At the 1992 Albertville games, he was the top American in both the large hill and normal hill events. He competed on the FIS World Cup circuit from 1989 to 1993 with several top-10 finishes. Holland is also remembered for his courageous comeback after suffering serious injuries during a training jump in 1987, changing his technique to go farther then he had before. He retired in 1993 and after the U.S. Ski Association abandoned ski jumping in 2007, Holland helped start and fund USA Ski Jumping (now USA Nordic Sport), a nonprofit that runs men’s and women’s national ski jumping and Nordic combined programs.

Connie LaRose

Coach/multi-sport athlete

Connie LaRose has had an incredible, legendary athletic career for over 50 years as both a high school and college student-athlete and a high school coach in Vermont. She was an all-around athlete at Bristol High and Champlain College before starting her coaching career in 1966. A pioneer in the Vermont’s women’s athletics prior to Title IX, basketball was her primary sport as a coach, where she amassed a 486-232 career record at three high schools, the fourth-winningest female hoop coach in the state. She won five girls basketball state titles, including the Division II crown in 2022 — her final year of coaching at Mount Abraham.

Bill Looker

Multi-sport athlete/football/track and field

A speedy multi-sport athlete at Rutland High then at the University of Vermont, Bill Looker was one of the state’s top high school football players, and was the state’s top sprinter. He won five of his six individual outdoor state sprint titles in 1970 and 1971 and anchored championship relay teams. He helped lead the Raiders to the 1969 state football title and he also led the 1971 Vermont Shrine team to a win over New Hampshire. A standout receiver at UVM, he was named to All-New England and All-Yankee Conference first-teams in 1974, and was the conference’s top punter in the early ‘70s. He is a member of the UVM Athletic Hall of Fame.

Tony Orciari

Basketball

A top scoring guard from East Burke, Orciari in four years each at St. Johnsbury Academy and at UVM tallied over 1,700 career points in both high school and college. He led the Hilltoppers to three straight trips to the Division I Final Four from 1995 to 1997, twice to the finals and the 1997 state title. He was the first two-time winner of Mr. Basketball by the Burlington Free Press, in 1996 and 1997, and both seasons he also was the Vermont’s Gatorade award winner. He was the 1998 America East rookie of the year for the Catamounts and was the second UVM player to earn all-conference honors all four seasons.

Frank Pecora

Baseball coach

A baseball coach in the state for nearly five decades at Northfield High School and then at Norwich University, Frabk Pecora won 15 high school state titles. He was the coach and also athletic director at Northfield for 38 years starting in 1975, leading the Marauders to 19 trips to the state title game while winning 488 games. After assisting at Norwich for three seasons he became the Cadets head coach in 2016 before retiring in 2024. He was named GNAC coach of the year in 2017 and his final team reached the 2024 GNAC championship. The baseball field at Northfield’s Memorial Park was named Frank Pecora Field at Memorial Park in 2013. In 2014, he was the first Vermont coach to be named to the National Federation of State High Schools National High School Hall of Fame.

Mike Rochford

Multi-sport/baseball

An outstanding three-sport athlete at South Burlington High School in the early ‘80s, Mike Rochford is the first and only Vermont high school product to be selected in the Major League Draft and then reach the major leagues. He was a football, basketball and baseball standout at South Burlington. Highlights include pitching the Rebels to 1981 Division I state title as a senior, scoring 1,026 career points in hoops leading SBHS in 1981 to 20-3 record and the semifinals. In the fall he was three-year standout at quarterback and as a junior he led the team to the 1979 state championship. A left handed pitcher, Rochford was selected by the Red Sox in the first round of the 1982 January Draft out of Santa Fe Community College in Florida. After an excellent stretch in the minors, he went on to pitch in eight games over three seasons for the Red Sox from 1988 to 1990.

Jack Healey

Media (Mal Boright inductee)

A broadcast veteran for over 50 years in the state, Jack Healey has been named Vermont sportscaster of the year for an unprecedented 20 times. There are not many levels of sports he has not called in the state, first on the radio and now on the internet. Healey has called numerous high school football and basketball games in and around Rutland including many state championship games, called UVM men’s basketball and men’s hockey, minor league baseball for the Vermont Reds, Mariners, Expos and the Lake Monsters. The hockey press box at Castleton’s Spartan Arena in Rutland was named the Jack Healey Broadcast Booth in October 2022.

Leo Papineau

Multi-sport/athlete/coach/administrator (Historical inductee)

A three-sport standout captain and athlete (ice hockey, football and tennis) at St. Michael’s College in the 1920s, Leo Papineau went on to compile an coaching record of 670-216-9 across five sports over 27 years at three Franklin County high schools. He also was a longtime athletics administrator and was a state-wide recognized basketball official. A strong advocate of girls sports in the 1930s and ’40s, Papineau led his schools to several girls basketball state championships. He also helped bring boys hockey to BFA St. Albans in the 1930s winning two state titles.

Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @aabrami5.