Jewish Sports Hall of Fame Seeking Nominations

Nominations to the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame are being accepted now through Friday, Jan. 11, 2008.

The Jewish Sports Hall of Fame was established in 1979 to honor Jewish men and women from Columbus who have accomplished extraordinary achievements in sports and made significant contributions to society through sports.

Candidates for induction must be Jewish, age 35 or older, a native of Columbus or a resident of Columbus for a significant portion of his or her life, and have been an outstanding athlete or coach in amateur or professional athletics. The 2008 honorees will be inducted into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in October during the annual Sports Spectacular event.

This past October, Allan Byer, JCC baseball Sunday Morning League MVP (1945) and All-City League Basketball team member (1945), current principal partner/owner of the San Francisco Giants, and David Kass, three-time All American Men's Tennis Champion and former professional tennis player, were inducted into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Previous inductees include: World Tennis champion, Thelma "Tybie" Thall Sommer; Columbus Dispatch sports writer, Lou Berliner; World Table Tennis champ, Lea Thall Neuberger; Cincinnati Reds player, Joe Bonowitz; professional basketball player, Morris "Mendy" Snyder; OSU football player, Leo Yassenoff; New York Giant, Moses Solomon (aka the "Rabbi of Swat"); New York Giant and Boston Braves player, Al Kauffman; Buffalo Bisons player, Frank Glassman; boxer Lou Bloom; Senior Olympic boxer, Zalman Rosenfeld; NCAA fencing champ, Dr. Ivan Gilbert; baseball player and author, Ronald Golden; New York Yankee, Ricky Clowson; National Tennis champ, Neal Newman; boxer, Ben Cowall; Big 10 fencing champ and medalist, Michael Broidy, and OSU baseball record-holder, Tim Kauffman.

All are invited to submit nominations to the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, accompanied by as much support information about the candidate(s) as is available.

For more information, contact Jeanna Brownlee at jbrownlee@columbusjcc.org, or (614) 559-6274. Nomination forms may be found by clicking here.