The Montgomery County Sports Hall of Fame, which was founded in 2019, in 2024 named high school football coaching legend Bob Milloy as the new chair of its board of directors. Ever since taking the position, Coach Milloy has led an energetic and aggressive program to take the six-year-old Sports Hall of Fame, whose first classes of inductees have included some of the top names associated with County sports, to increased prominence.
The Class of 2025 inductees will add to the prestige of the Hall of Fame. At ceremonies at 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 4, at the Silver Spring Civic Building in Downtown Silver Spring, the new inductees will be lacrosse player and executive Paul Rabil, soccer player Oguchi Onyewu, triple jumper Thea Lafond, football player Bob Windsor, hockey player Haley Skarupa, and posthumously football coach Al Thomas. In addition, a lifetime achievement award will be presented and three community members who have made significant contributions to sports and athletes will be honored.
In 2024, the Sports Hall of Fame found a physical home as part of the new Silver Spring Recreation and Aquatic Center in Downtown Silver Spring. On July 23, 2024, a new sculpture of former gold medal-winning gymnast Dominque Dawes was dedicated outside of the recreation center with County Executive Marc Elrich and County Councilmember Gabe Albornoz leading the ceremonies.
Dawes, who attended Gaithersburg High School, was a member of the first class of inductees for the County Sports Hall of Fame. Ledecky, a seven-time Olympic gold medal winner who went to the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, and Milloy, the winningest football coach in Maryland high school history, also were inducted in that first class.
Ensuing classes have included athletes, coaches and media members whose roots stem from all parts of the County.
“We have already inducted an incredible list of people from many generations and many sports,” said Milloy, who won 405 games in 47 years of coaching at Whitman, Springbrook, Sherwood and Good Counsel high schools. “We are so proud to be honoring another class of great inductees with the Class of 2025. One of our hardest jobs each year is selecting new honorees because there so many people in this County that have made an impact on sports—at their schools, at colleges, in professional sports and in the sporting world. These people have made their families, friends, schools and communities so proud and we are working on furthering the Sports Hall of Fame into an institution that will honor their achievements and make sure they are always remembered and recognized.”
As the new chair of the board of directors, Milloy succeeded Trish Heffelfinger, the former founding executive director of the Maryland Soccer Foundation in Germantown. She served as the first board chair of the County Sports Hall of Fame.
Milloy said the immediate goals of the nonprofit organization will be to hire a fulltime executive director and to have future induction as part of a dinner ceremony.
“What the County Sports Hall of Fame has created in just a few years has been incredible, with much of that due to the high level of achievements of the inductees and a significant part due to the early board of directors who were determined to honor those achievements,” said Milloy. “We now are ready to move to the next level and our intent is get more members of the County athletic community involved. We invite people to submit nominations for consideration in future classes and for themselves to be part of our activities and our mission. We are here to be an important part of Montgomery County.”
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