Trio with area ties set to enter GCC Hall of Fame
GROVE CITY — Jim McElhaney, Carla Wetzel Patarini and Bob Crow certainly compiled Hall of Fame credentials worthy of enshrinement at Grove City College.
But this soon?
The trio are among the school's second Athletic Hall of Fame class and will be honored at the ceremonial dinner slated for 6 p.m. Saturday on campus.
"It's quite an honor to go in any time, considering the number of years the Hall of Fame covers,"Patarini said. "To go in with just the second group ever ... that's unbelievable to me."
AKnoch graduate, Patarini set a GCCrecord by earning 11 varsity letters from 1978-82, when she competed in volleyball, basketball and softball.
All three of those programs posted winning records during her tenure.
McElhaney, a Butler graduate who still lives in the area, competed in track and field at Grove City College from 1983-86 and still owns school records in the javelin (220 feet), discus (155-7) and shot put (53-6).
"I didn't even realize they had started a sports hall of fame up there,"McElhaney said. "I'm very honored to be going in at all, let alone this early."
Crow will be making his second appearance at the college within the past few months. The Wolverines' second leading men's basketball scorer with 1,450 points, he was part of GCC's 1982-83 team that finished 21-4 and ranked No. 7 in the nation.
"They brought us back for the homecoming parade, since this is the 25th anniversary of that season,"Crow said. "The program's all-time scoring leader, Jeff Claypool, was part of the first Hall of Fame class.
"He scored more than 2,000 points in his college career. I've always admired him as a legend. He's coming to this dinner and I'm looking forward to meeting him."
Crow also is a Grove City High School graduate and scored 1,111 points for the Eagles' basketball team.
Joining this trio in the 2008 GCCAthletic Hall of Fame induction class are football, basketball and track star Todd Alexander from New Castle, swimming standout Skip Arbuckle of Erie, football and track athlete Jeff Cass of Erie, tennis player Anne Kister Parker of Hanover, diver Chris Van DeMark of Lockport, N.Y., and soccer, basketball and tennis coach Cliff Wettig.
Inductions are determined by an 11-person selection committee consisting of current and former athletic administrators, former student athletes and other GCC Alumni.
Patarini played on seven teams that won women's Keystone Conference titles and on six teams that reached postseason play.
"That was so much fun,"she said. "We had a number of talented athletes on those teams. We were the group that got the women's athletic program going there at the time."
The point guard on the basketball team for four years, Patarini was part of a program that won 66 of 78 games during that time. She played third base and was MVPof GCC's first women's softball team, which finished 8-2 in 1982.
"Knoch didn't have a softball team when I was in high school,"Patarini said. "I had played in summer leagues for a few years. My dad was a great ballplayer in his day and he taught me the game."
McElhaney originally planned to play football at the Air Force Academy, but accepted a medical discharge because of a broken foot he suffered before his first season there."I enrolled at Grove City, figured I'd stay for a year, then go back to the Air Force when I was healthy,"McElhaney said. "But I eventually realized I had gone to the Air Force for the wrong reasons."In high school, everybody kept telling me I was too small to do this, too slow to do that, and that I couldn't play Division I football. I just wanted to prove them wrong."After deciding to stay at Grove City, a severe knee injury suffered during a practice his sophomore year ended McElhaney's football career. He was a defensive end."I wound up doing track for four years and never did get full range of motion back in that knee,"said McElhaney, who had knee replacement surgery recently. "I was never 100 percent healthy in college."Even so, he became GCC's first five-time all-American track and field athlete.Crow was a senior on that 1982-83 GCCbasketball team that went 21-4. He roomed with Butler graduate and teammate Mark Smith."Mark averaged 19 points per game and I averaged 18 that year,"Crow recalled. "Mark had food poisoning the day of our first playoff game and we lost a close game to Widener."If he was healthy, I think we would have won the national championship that year."
Crow went on to play two years for Athletes In Action and one year of pro basketball in France, where he averaged 32 points per game and was selected league MVP."They wanted me back and I loved it over there, but the woman who would one day become my wife was a junior at Grove City College and I didn't want to be away from her for another year,"Crow said."So I chose my girl over basketball. And I made the right choice."
