WVU Sports Hall of Fame Class Selected
Six outstanding contributors to Mountaineer athletics make up the 14th class of honorees in the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame.
"This is another tremendous group of inductees who represent the great Mountaineer tradition," Athletic Director Ed Pastilong said. The 2004 class includes former basketball coaches Gale Catlett and Lee Patton, world-class wrestler Dominic Black, Olympic shooter Bruce Meredith, football legend Floyd "Ben" Schwartzwalder, and multisport standout Charley Seabright.
Induction ceremonies will take place around the WVUJames Madison football game on September 25. This class brings the number of total inductees to 89.
Dominic
Black enjoyed a banner collegiate
wrestling career at WVU. Black finished as one of only six wrestlers
in school history to amass more than 100 career victories, posting
a 105-36-2 mark. He capped his stellar career with impressive
seasons in 1990 and 1991. As a junior, he went 33-5 to establish
a record for wins in a season by a WVU 177-pounder, won an EWL
title, and competed in his second consecutive NCAA tournament.
As a senior, Black posted a 39-win season (third-best in school
history), a second EWL crown, and earned All-America honors (fourth-place
finish) at the NCAA championships.
Black was a member of the U.S. national freestyle team, one of several athletes competing to wrestle at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. He has a number five national ranking in freestyle at 96 kg/211.5 lbs. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, he resides in Colorado Springs for Olympic training.
Gale
Catlett was a Mountaineer basketball
player from 1959 to 1963, helping the Mountaineers to records
of 24-4, 26-6, and 23-8 and two NCAA tournament berths. After
graduation in 1963, he started a career in college coaching that
took him to Richmond, Davidson, Kansas, and Kentucky.
Catlett returned to his alma mater as head coach in 1978, posting a WVU record of 439-276 over the next 24 years and an overall coaching mark of 565-320, making him just the 45th Division I coach all-time to win 500 career games. Taking 20 teams to postseason play (11 NCAA/nine NIT), he coached two Metro Conference champions (1975-76), five Atlantic 10 regular seasons, two A-10 tournament (1983-84) champions, and shepherded WVU's move into Big East competition, where his 1998 club advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16. He retired in 2002.
Catlett and his wife Anise, a Morgantown native and former WVU cheerleader, have two daughters, Krista (who is married to Ed Neumann) and Kara. They spend their time between homes in Morgantown and his hometown of Hedgesville, West Virginia.
Bruce
Meredith, one of the most talented
riflemen in WVU history, was born in Wheeling and grew up in
Boggs Run, a coal mine hollow in what is now a part of Benwood.
Meredith lettered at WVU in 1958-61; through the course of his career, the WVU rifle team finished with a 42-16 record. As team captain, he led WVU to a record of 25-3 and their first collegiate national team title. He won the national individual smallbore championship with a record score. He was WVU's initial first team rifle All-American in 1960 and repeated the honor in 1961. He was named Amateur Athlete of the Year by the West Virginia Sports Writers Association.
Meredith, an active competitor for 53 years, qualified for the Olympic Games in Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000. In Sydney, Meredith received volumes of publicity as the oldest competitor in the games at age 63.
He has set 164 U.S. national records. He was inducted into the U.S. Army Reserve International Rifle Roll of Honor in 2000 and serves on the Statutes and Eligibility Committee of the International Shooting Sport Federation. He owns Mountaineer Appraisal & Realty, conducting business in Georgia and North Carolina.
The late Lee Patton was an outstanding WVU
basketball coach from 1946 to 1950. A Carbon, Texas, native,
Patton led the Mountaineers to a 91-26 overall record during
his tenure for a .778 winning percentage, still the second best
in school history.
Patton led West Virginia to two straight NIT berths in 1946 and 1947. Under his direction, WVU posted a school-record 57-game home winning streak that ended in the final home game of the 1949 season against Pitt.
Fondly nicknamed "Worry Bird," Coach Patton passed away in February, 1950. He was survived by his wife Agnes and two daughters, Anne Patton Heater and Laura Lee Patton. Both daughters are graduates of WVU.
The
late Floyd "Ben" Schwartzwalder excelled in
two sports for WVU from 1930 to 1932. The Point Pleasant native
will go down as one of the smallest centers in Mountaineer history,
weighing only 148 pounds while playing for Coach Earle "Greasy"
Neale. Schwartzwalder also starred as a wrestler for Coach Steve
Harrick, winning all-campus in 1930 in the 155-pound weight class.
Schwartzwalder was named National Coach of the Year in 1959, and in 1967, he was elected president of the National Football Coaches Association.
Schwartzwalder married fellow WVU graduate Ruth "Reggie" Simpson and the couple had two children: Susan and Mary. He passed away in 1993 at age 83.
The
late Charley Seabright was a versatile athlete at WVU
from 1938 to 1941, earning three letters in football, two in
basketball, and two in baseball.
A native of Wheeling, Seabright averaged 4.1 points per game and scored 77 career points as a guard in basketball and started at first base in baseball, hitting over .300 for his career. He excelled most at football, where he was a standout quarterback for three years as a Mountaineer. He signed a professional contract with the Cleveland Rams of the NFL in 1941, but left the team to serve in the U.S. Army in World War II.
He was voted to the WVU football all-time team (1940-49) and was given a sportsmanship award by the Charleston Sportsman Club in 1980.
Seabright and his wife, the former Alice Olveski, had four children: Chuck, Jim, Joyce, and Charlene. He worked for Valley Machine in Martins Ferry, Ohio, for 28 years as a production manager. Seabright died at the age of 62 in March 1981, in Wheeling.