The Maryland State Athletic Hall of Fame was proud to recognize a star-studded class of 2023 who were honored at the 62nd induction banquet on November 9, 2023 at Martin’s West Baltimore.
Adrian Dantley, 68, was one of the most prolific scorers in NBA history. Born in Washington, D.C., he was part of Morgan Wootten’s great teams at DeMatha High School in Hyattsville, Md. Turning down the University of Maryland and UCLA among other suitors, he accepted a scholarship at Notre Dame, where he was a unanimous first team All-American in 1975 and 1976 and played a key role as a freshman in the Irish snapping UCLA’s 88-game winning streak in 1974.
After helping the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal in 1976, Dantley was drafted sixth by the Buffalo Braves and began a 15-year career in the NBA as 1977 Rookie of the Year. He scored 23,177 points while averaging 24 points per game, and was named to the All-Star Game six times. He led the NBA in scoring in 1981 and 1984, averaging better than 30 points per game with the Utah Jazz. Small for a forward at 6 feet 5, 215 pounds, he somehow posted up much bigger players inside. He finished ninth on the all-time scoring list. His 6,832 free throws made still rank No. 11 on the NBA list.
Dantley was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008. The Montgomery County resident served as an assistant coach to Terry Truax at Towson University from 1993 to 1996 and was assistant coach for the Denver Nuggets from 2003 to 2011.
Dantley and his wife of 42 years, Dinitri, have three children and two grandkids.
The first gymnast in the Maryland State Athletic Hall of Fame, Dominique Dawes, 46, won 15 U.S. Championships between 1991 and 1996. Born in Silver Spring, Md., she also broke ground as the first African-American gymnast to ever qualify for and compete in an Olympics and in 1996 became the first African-American to win an individual medal in Olympic gymnastics with a bronze medal in the floor exercises. A three-time Olympian, Dawes was a member of the “Magnificent Seven,” the first American team to win gold in women’s gymnastics at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. “Awesome Dawesome” retired after the Sydney Games in 2000 (team bronze) and graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2002, appeared on Broadway in a revival of “Grease” and became an advocate for young women in sports.
She served as president of the Women’s Sports Federation from 2004 to 2006, was appointed by President Obama to join football star Drew Brees as co-chair of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition in 2010 and in 2020 opened the Dominique Dawes Gymnastics & Ninja Academy in Montgomery County, Md., to create a healthy and nurturing environment for all children, including her four children, two of them twins. Dawes is a member of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame (2009) and USA Olympic Hall of Fame (with the Magnificent Seven in 2008).
Jermaine Lewis, 48, was a key player on the Ravens’ 2000 Super Bowl champions. “Born to run,” the Lanham, Md., native starred in both track and football at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. Track & Field News named him its 1991 Athlete of the Year after he set the national indoor record in the 200 meters (20.8 seconds) and clocked the second-fastest time in the country in the 100 (10.3). As a four-year starter at the University of Maryland, Lewis set records that still stand for catches (193), receiving yards (2,932) and TD receptions (21).
But the nine-year NFL veteran is best known for his Ravens’ heroics in 2000-2001 after his son Geronimo was stillborn. Eleven days later in the regular-season finale, he became just the third man in NFL history to return two punts for scores in a single game. Then in Super Bowl XXXV, Lewis’ 43-yard punt return set up the first touchdown and he answered a New York Giants’ kickoff return for a TD with one of his own, pointing to the heavens in the end zone. A two-time Pro Bowler, Lewis finished his career with 10,170 all-purpose yards and remains in the top 10 all-time for punt return yards in the NFL with 3,282. Now a father of three sons with his wife Imara, Lewis does motivational speaking, assists youth sports programs, and oversees the Geronimo Lewis Foundation, which provides assistance to programs that support at risk youth in the DMV area; and the Jermaine Lewis Foundation, which provides college scholarships.
The legendary Northern Dancer, who won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in 1964, stood at Windfields Farm in Chesapeake City, Md., for 22 years. During that time, he became unarguably the greatest sire of all time. His bloodlines are said to be in 90 percent of today’s thoroughbreds. At least twice, entire Kentucky Derby fields have descended from Northern Dancer. No other horse has ever had such an accomplishment.
Ridden by Hall of Fame jockey Bill Hartack, Northern Dancer won nine major stakes races during the 1963-64 racing seasons while winning 14 out of 18 starts. But it was in the breeding shed where he was unmatched. Standing at Windfields Farm from 1968 until his death in 1990, Northern Dancer’s stud fee rose to $1 million, without guarantee of a live foal. No stallion before or since has come near that total. By the time he died in 1990, the greatest granddaddy of thoroughbred racing had produced over 400 winners, including 150 stakes champions.
According to Maclean’s magazine in 2014, a French syndicate made a $40 million offer to Northern Dancer’s owner, E.P. Taylor, to buy the horse when he was 21. One shareholder wired back: “Over my dead body!”
Pensioned at age 26, Northern Dancer’s lifetime stud fees tallied up to $117,752,000. When the grand old stallion died of colic in 1990, the Taylor family had him shipped back to his native Canada and buried between the Windfields barn where he was born and the barn where he created his first classic runner. Northern Dancer is the second horse inducted into the Maryland State Athletic Hall of Fame, following Native Dancer in 2014.
Harold Solomon, 70, won 24 Grand Prix tennis championships in the 1970s and early ’80s and was a member of four U.S. Davis Cup teams. A native of Washington, D.C., who grew up in Silver Spring, Md., and attended Springbrook High School, Solomon ranked among the world’s top 10 players four years, including No. 5 in 1980.
Among the smaller players at 5 feet 6 and 130 pounds, Solomon was tenacious on the court, leading to his nickname as “the human backboard” because he seemingly returned every shot sent to him. An All-American at Rice University, he turned pro after his sophomore year. Although he never won a singles Grand Slam, Solomon was a French Open finalist in 1976, a semifinalist in 1974 and 1980, and a U.S. Open semifinalist in 1977. Playing with doubles partner Eddie Dibbs in 1976, “The Bagel Twins” reached a No. 4 world ranking.
Solomon began playing tennis at the age of 5, and as a junior player he was ranked as high as No. 2 nationally in the 14, 16, and 18 age groups.
From 1979 to 1981, Solomon was president of the Association of Tennis Professionals, the governing body of men’s tennis. He began coaching in the 1990s, working with Jim Courier, Mary Jo Fernandez, and Jennifer Capriati, among others. In 2005, he opened the Harold Solomon Tennis Institute, which he operated for 13 years in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where he lives with his wife of 45 years, Jan. They have two children and three grandkids.
He and his wife also support and advocate for The Hunger Project, a global organization that focuses on empowering women's leadership in ending hunger and mobilizing people to end their own hunger, thereby increasing their self-sufficiency. Solomon is in the D.C. Sports Hall of Fame, Intercollegiate Tennis Hall of Fame, USTA Mid-Atlantic Hall of Fame, and the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
John F. Steadman Lifetime Achievement Honoree Scott Garceau
Scott Garceau, 72, has been part of the Baltimore sports scene for more than 40 years as a television sportscaster, play-by-play voice, and radio host. He landed here in 1980 and began a 28-year stint as sports anchor for WMAR-TV. He served as the play-by-play voice of the Baltimore Ravens their first 10 seasons and is in his 17th season as a member of the Baltimore Orioles broadcasting team. He rejoined the baseball club in 2020 as a television play-by-play announcer, after previously spending 13 seasons as part of the broadcast team from 1981-92, including covering the 1983 World Series champions.
A pro’s pro and genuine nice guy, Garceau transitioned to 105.7 The Fan in 2008, serving as an original co-host of the afternoon drive radio show. Teaming with partner Jeremy Conn, Garceau enjoyed sports talk radio for a dozen years before returning to the Orioles. A native of Ishpeming, Mich., Garceau has endeared himself to the Baltimore community, serving charitable causes and supporting local sports, broadcasting college lacrosse and the Loyola-Calvert Hall Turkey Bowl football game on Thanksgiving. A five-time Maryland Sportscaster of the Year award winner, Garceau and his wife of 49 years, Georgeanna, live in Fallston, Md. Their two married daughters and four grandchildren also live in Harford County.
Chris Weller, 79, led the University of Maryland women's basketball team for 27 seasons from 1975 through 2002. Her start coincided with the passage of Title IX in June 1972 and from that start she built what had been essentially an emerging intramural program to an Atlantic Coast Conference and national powerhouse. During her era, she competed not only on the court but also worked to gain recognition, scholarships, court time, and funding to support the women's program.
Weller (499-286, .636) guided the Maryland women to eight ACC titles and three trips to the Final Four, averaging 19 wins per year. In nine of her 27 seasons, the Terps achieved national Top 10 rankings, including in 1992, when they were ranked No. 1 for much of the year and Weller was named Naismith National Coach of the Year. She also was a two-time ACC Coach of the Year and coached four USA National and Select teams.
At Maryland, she coached three All-Americans, five Olympians, and 20 All-ACC selections, who helped her to 10 20-win seasons. In 27 years, all but four players who finished their eligibility graduated. One of just three women’s basketball coaches in University of Maryland history (with her successor Brenda Frese and Dottie McKnight 1971-75), Weller, who began as an assistant to McKnight after teaching phys ed for seven years and starting Montgomery County’s first girls basketball program at John F. Kennedy High School, was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010. A 1966 graduate of UM, Weller played for the Terps for four years, a lean, long-haired 5-foot-6 forward from nearby Clinton, Md., who led the 1965-66 team in scoring. She now lives in Silver Spring, Md. An honorary banner bearing her name is in the rafters at Xfinity Center.
Thank you to everyone who submitted a nomination for the class of 2024. Stay tuned for updates!
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Adrian Dantley, 68, was one of the most prolific scorers in NBA history. Born in Washington, D.C., he was part of Morgan Wootten’s great teams at DeMatha High School in Hyattsville, Md. Turning down the University of Maryland and UCLA among other suitors, he accepted a scholarship at Notre Dame, where he was a unanimous first team All-American in 1975 and 1976 and played a key role as a freshman in the Irish snapping UCLA’s 88-game winning streak in 1974.
Jermaine Lewis, 48, was a key player on the Ravens’ 2000 Super Bowl champions. “Born to run,” the Lanham, Md., native starred in both track and football at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. Track & Field News named him its 1991 Athlete of the Year after he set the national indoor record in the 200 meters (20.8 seconds) and clocked the second-fastest time in the country in the 100 (10.3). As a four-year starter at the University of Maryland, Lewis set records that still stand for catches (193), receiving yards (2,932) and TD receptions (21).
Harold Solomon, 70, won 24 Grand Prix tennis championships in the 1970s and early ’80s and was a member of four U.S. Davis Cup teams. A native of Washington, D.C., who grew up in Silver Spring, Md., and attended Springbrook High School, Solomon ranked among the world’s top 10 players four years, including No. 5 in 1980.
Chris Weller, 79, led the University of Maryland women's basketball team for 27 seasons from 1975 through 2002. Her start coincided with the passage of Title IX in June 1972 and from that start she built what had been essentially an emerging intramural program to an Atlantic Coast Conference and national powerhouse. During her era, she competed not only on the court but also worked to gain recognition, scholarships, court time, and funding to support the women's program.
