Good company for Maciaszek in IBCA Hall of Fame
Some of the top high school basketball coaches in the state gained entrance into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame on Saturday in a induction ceremony at Illinois State University.
Fittingly, the reporter who has helped tell their stories for nearly 20 years was in Bloomington, too.
Daily Herald sports staffer Marty Maciaszek joins boys basketball coaches such as Bill Wandro (Hoffman Estates) and Joe Majkowski (St. Viator) in a star-studded 40th class of Hall of Famers.
Maciaszek, a York High School and Bradley University product, started contributing stories for the Daily Herald in 1992 and joined the staff full-time in 1995. He has focused on coverage of boys sports, and in the winter on basketball, providing thorough and passionate reporting of primarily the Mid-Suburban League schools plus Maine West, St. Viator and Leyden.
He has covered a total of 12 boys basketball state tournaments, the first two with the Peoria Journal Star and the most recent 10 with the Daily Herald. A career highlight for Maciaszek was covering Schaumburg’s 2000-01 championship over Thornwood for the Class AA crown.
Maciaszek has also maintained a big-picture awareness of the high school sports scene. He’s been an AP poll voter since 1995, has coordinated the AP boys basketball all-state teams and regularly provides Friday night football and basketball reports to WBBM radio (780 AM and 105.9 FM) in addition to blogging at dailyherald.com on a wider array of high school sports.
Maciaszek follows retired Daily Herald high school sports luminary Bob Frisk and current Fox Valley high school sports editor John Radtke into the IBCA Hall of Fame.
“I am very honored and humbled to have been chosen for such a great honor and to take part in such a wonderful evening,” Maciaszek said. “I want to thank everyone at the IBCA, the Daily Herald and all of the coaches and people involved with high school basketball in the area who helped make this possible. To follow in the footsteps of two great Hall of Famers at the Daily Herald in Bob Frisk and John Radtke is an honor I will always cherish.”
Among the basketball greats joining Maciaszek for induction were recently retired Warren coach Chuck Ramsey, Mike Bailey of St. Patrick (a Mount Prospect resident), Todd Sutton of Neuqua Valley and retired Downers Grove South coach Paul Runyon.
Naperville Central’s Andy Nussbaum, who won back-to-back championships in 2002-03 and ’03-04, led the area’s girls basketball coaching inductees.
Downers Grove South’s Bryan Mullins gained entrance as a player and the teams inducted include the Glenbrook North 2005 Class 2A boys champs and the College of DuPage men’s team from 2002.
Longtime assistant coach Bob Scarpino (Wheeling, Hersey, St. Edward) and officials Steve Scholten (Elk Grove) and Peter King (Palatine) were also inducted.