Revere High School Athletic Hall of Fame recognizes former athletes

The Revere Athletic Hall of Fame is a showcase where former athletes among others receive recognition for their accomplishments and contributions to the Revere athletics program.

Tom McKinnon, director of athletics at Revere, described what the Athletic Hall of Fame entails.

“The Revere Athletic Hall of Fame is basically for student athletes, coaches, and community members that have an impact on a sport at Revere,” McKinnon said.

McKinnon mentioned the process of how the committee nominates someone.

“There’s a nomination form that we actually have on the athletics website. So, nominations come in and then a panel will discuss and vote on the nominations. The panel consists of myself, the principal, the school board president or one of the school board members, a teacher, two coaches that coach male sports and two coaches that coach female sports, our booster club president, and an actual member of the hall of fame that’s already been inducted,” McKinnon said.

McKinnon described the criteria a nominee must meet in order to take their induction into consideration.

“If it’s a team, then it has to be at least 7 years from their last competition, they must have exceptional achievements such as undefeated seasons, league/district/regional championships, and state tournament appearances or championships. If it’s an athlete, then he/she must have graduated from Revere High School at least 7 years ago, demonstrated a high degree of skill and performance (for example, earned an MVP award in a selected sport, etc.), competed on a Suburban League championship team, and was a statistical leader or record holder in a selected sport. There’s also categories for distinguished alumnus at collegiate level, coaches, special contributors, and a combination category for all of the categories,” McKinnon said.

McKinnon then elaborated on how the committee uses this criteria to select nominees.

“When we meet and we look at those people who have been nominated, we look at this criteria first to see if they meet it, and then we’ll sit and discuss the candidates,” McKinnon said.

Phil King, Revere High School principal, discussed his role in the Athletic Hall of Fame and how he is simply one of the committee members.

King said how anyone in the community can nominate someone and the process the committee follows when selecting potential candidates.

“There are publications put out throughout the district and online, and people will nominate someone that they think was a great athlete about 10 to 15 years ago. So the person then submits the nomination form, and then that nomination form is then reviewed by all of the members, and then we get together and we read those, and then we say, ‘Hey, this person’s a really strong athlete,’ and then we make a case for the people that we read about, and then we would select them from there,” King said.

King commented on how many nominations the committee usually receives.

“It can be anywhere from five to fifty. Because we just started, we’ve gotten a lot of them, and over the past two years we’ve inducted about twenty people, and a team or two. We still have a bunch of those applications still from those times, but people will continue to send new ones in,” King said.

King explained when the committee usually selects nominees to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

“We select those members usually in the springtime, and over the summer they’re contacted, and usually during a football game at halftime or something like that, we induct those people into the hall of fame and we recognize them there, because that’s when we have the most people there, and it’s always good to have a lot of people there to make it feel like you’ve really accomplished something,” King said.

The Revere Athletic Hall of Fame is located outside the gymnasium both near and inside the showcase.