Recognizing the Greewave

Today’s the final day to nominate for the inaugural class of the Greenwave Hall of Fame.

Spanning more than 100 years, Fallon has seen many regional and state championships accumulate in addition to many standout athletes who would continue their excellence in college and even professionally.

For the past six months, a small team at the county museum has been compiling information from the time periods when it was difficult to find statistics about some of the lesser-known individuals who still contributed greatly to the Greenwave. It came down to the yearbooks to help guide this group into the past.

“What we concentrated on was those yearbooks. That took a lot of time,” Nancy Sanders Stewart said in March. “We only did the museum’s yearbooks. Those are also lacking so we did a disclosure. Sometimes, there was no yearbook. Sometimes, there were pages taken out. Sometimes, depending upon what class was either really good yearbook class, I don’t remember what they called it, some of those students were very good. So, we were actually relying on what the students reported in the yearbooks. Then later on when our student population grew, then they started to add in supplements. Some of the years that should have had supplements, those were missing. Then, they began to change their style of presenting yearbooks for pictures. It was like a storybook.”

Several Fallon athletes and even coaches are in the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association and Nevada Wolf Pack halls of fame. Jim Bailey, who starred in football, track and basketball in the 1920s, and Noble Waite, who played basketball, were inducted in the inaugural class to the Nevada hall of fame in 1973. Both Bailey and Waite coached at Fallon, as well, and Bailey was even named to Nevada’s Team of the Century.

Val York, the multisport athlete from the 1950s, is the only Greenwave to be inducted in both the NIAA and Nevada halls of fame. York lettered four times in basketball and three in baseball for the Wolf Pack before serving in Vietnam as an army helicopter pilot.

Many greats have walked through the halls and stepped on the court or field during Fallon’s existence and the school continues to produce exceptional athletes and coaches. Most recently, Aarik Wilson competed in the Beijing Olympics after winning the U.S. Trials nine years ago and fellow classmate Jennifer Hucke played on Stanford’s national championship volleyball team.

With nominations ending today for the 2017 class, anyone can nominate by visiting www.greenwavehalloffame.com/nominate for a form. Forms can be submitted electronically via email or they can be dropped off at Churchill County High School or the LVN. The first class will be announced by the end of the month and the induction ceremony and dinner is Oct. 7 at the high school.