Five candidates added to Elgin Hall of Fame ballot
The Elgin Sports Hall of Fame has added five candidates to its ballot for consideration. The new ballot consists of 27 individuals. Ballots will be sent out to members on Aug. 16 and members will be permitted to vote for up to eight candidates. Results of the election will be released Sept. 8.
The five new candidates are:
Jon Charneskey: A 1957 graduate of Elgin High, Charneskey is nominated for the sport of handball. He is the only Elginite to have earned the coveted rank of Grand Master from the United States Handball Association for having won a minimum of 10 national championships. He won a world championship in singles play in 1999.
Kerri Kerber: A 1991 Larkin graduate, Kerber was a part of Larkin teams that won regional titles in 1990 and 1991 before she went on to play at Northern Illinois University. She also played for the Elgin Big League state championship team in 1992. At NIU, she was the Midwestern Collegiate Conference Player of the Year in 1996, the same year she led the Huskies to the MCC championship.
James Kossakowski: A 1988 Larkin graduate and three-sport athlete, Kossakowski is nominated for wrestling. He had 91 wins in his Larkin career and finished sixth in the state at 145 pounds his junior season then came back to take second in the state at 155 pounds his senior year. He then attended NIU, where he was a four-year letter winner in wrestling. He earned a spot in the NCAA championships his senior year and was one win away from All-American status. He also qualified for the Olympic Trials in Greco-Roman style wrestling in 1992.
Ryan McKenna: McKenna, who attended St. Edward High School for two years before graduating from Larkin in 2000, was an all-state soccer player in 1998 and 1999 as well as an all-state baseball player in 2000. He went on to play three years of baseball at Arizona State University, where he had a .286 career batting average and made no errors his entire career.
Jay Goedert: Goedert, an Elgin High graduate, is nominated as a friend of sports for his work as an assistant coach. He spent 19 years coaching basketball, 12 of them at the NCAA Division I level. He was an assistant coach at Elgin Community College and at Elgin High, as well as at NIU and DePaul University. He was named Most Visible Assistant Coach in America by Hoop Scoop Magazine in 1994. In 2004, the Jay Goedert DePaul/NIU MVP trophy was established in honor of his contributions to college basketball at those two schools.
For more information on the Elgin Sports Hall of Fame, visit www.eshof.org.