Chuck Stark: Three Smiths head 2018 Kitsap Hall class
It’s the most common surname in the United States.
Since 2005, when the Kitsap Sports Hall of Fame was expanded to include all sports, 196 athletes and 25 teams have been inducted. Over those years, the organization has honored just one Smith.
Daryl Smith, who put Olympic High wrestling on the map as a coach, was inducted in 2010.
The 2018 class, announced this week by the sponsoring Kitsap Athletic Roundtable, includes three Smiths. They’ll be inducted, along with the rest of the class, on Jan. 26 at Kiana Lodge in Poulsbo.
Rick Smith, Daryl’s brother, will be the recipient of the Rex Brown Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes individuals or organizations that have made outstanding contributions that have impacted the Kitsap community.
Rick fought tirelessly to bring professional or amateur baseball to Kitsap County. The Silverdale attorney got it done by lobbying for creation of a public facilities district and getting the baseball field built at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds and Events Center.
It led to the arrival of the Kitsap BlueJackets in 2005, a summer collegiate team that thrived during its formative years, bringing an affordable and high-quality brand of baseball to the region. After 10 years, Smith sold the West Coast League-franchise, which waded through a tough year before the new owner folded up shop and started a new team in Port Angeles.
Kingston High soccer coach Craig Smith is considered the father of soccer in the north part of the county. He started the program at North Kitsap High in 1991, coaching the boys for 14 years and the girls’ program for three. After coaching stops at Chimacum and Port Townsend, he was hired to coach the boys’ and girls’ teams at Kingston in 2007. With help from his brother, Tony Smith, the Bucs have made several deep runs in the postseason.
Doug Smith had a short stay in Kitsap County, but the native of Idaho Falls, Idaho, and father of NFL quarterback Alex Smith made quite an impact with his football teams from 1981 to 1986 Olympic High. The Trojans were 35-1 during the regular season and won four league championships from ’83 to ’86. Several of his players moved on to play college football, and he impacted a number of young assistant coaches during his time in Bremerton.
The rest of the 2018 class (in alphabetical order):
Aaron Capps: The owner of Bremerton's Advantage Nissan was one of the top sprint car drivers in the Northwest for years. He got serious about racing when he moved to Indianapolis, where he worked for renowned race-car builder Grant Hill when he wasn’t racing. Capps served as the president of the Bremerton Motorsports Park.
Brent Criswell: Arguably the best wrestler to come out of Kitsap County. He won national Greco-Roman and Cadet titles in 2006 and was 107-3 with 88 pins while placing second as a sophomore and winning state titles as a junior and senior at South Kitsap. He won three Pac-12 titles, one at Arizona State before the Sun Devils dropped the sport. He transferred to Boise State (a member of the Pac-12 in wrestling) and won two more, placing sixth at the NCAA Championships as a junior. A back injury prevented him from going for a fourth Pac-12 title as a senior.
Stephanie Davis Malone: One of the top junior golfers in the state, the Bainbridge High grad played four years at Stanford, and finished second at the 1990 U.S. Women’s Amateur, losing a playoff in the championship match to eventual LPGA star Pat Hurst. She’s been a pro at the Broadmoor Golf Club in Seattle the last 18 years after previous stops at Mill Creek, Sahalee Country Club and Hayden Lake (Idaho).
Pete Elswick: The 1970 West Bremerton graduate was an imposing fullback/linebacker in high school, and started three years as an offensive guard at the University of Washington. He earned All-Pac-8 honorable mention honors while protecting quarterback Sonny Sixkiller.
Steve Endresen: The 6-foot-6 shooter with considerable range averaged 20.4 points over his three-year career (1968-70) at Bainbridge. He was the state’s second-leading scorer as a senior, averaging 27.5 ppg. He signed with Seattle University and transferred to Point Loma Nazarene, an NAIA school in San Diego, where he averaged 20 points. Endresen played two years of pro basketball in France.
Lauren Haas Peters: The 2004 Olympic High grad was one of the most highly-recruited Division I softball players to come out of the area. She started four years at Southern Illinois, earning Missouri Valley Conference MVP honors as a senior after hitting .388 with 39 RBI. During her career, the infielder hit .320 with 24 home runs. She was inducted into the SIU Spots Hall of Fame in 2015.
Mark Keel: The Central Kitsap football coach was inducted into the Olympic College Sports Hall of Fame this summer. The Clover Park grad was a two-year standout for the Rangers as a tight end in 1979 and ’80, and caught 59 passes in two years at Arizona. He also played a year of basketball and set the school record in the triple jump while at Olympic. He was drafted in the ninth round of the NFL draft by the Patriots, but signed with the Arizona Wranglers of the USFL.
Nancy Kelstrup: Kelstrup is the first female recipient of the Dick Todd Officials Award, which was instituted in memory of the late baseball/softball ump and basketball/soccer referee. Kelstrup, a talented athlete who came along before Title IX, was a bit of latecomer to basketball officiating, starting in 1996, but quickly worked her way up through the ranks. The Central Kitsap grad worked as many as 150 games a year, calling junior college, high school, junior high, pee wee and rec-league games. She’s worked junior college and high school state tournaments.
Boyd McCaslin: The 1943 Bremerton graduate played five years of college basketball — at Hobart College in New York, Dartmouth (where he earned second-team All-Ivy League honors) and three years at Michigan, where he started on the 1948 Big 10 championship team. McCaslin also played on a college all-star team against the Harlem Globetrotters before 14,000 at the old Chicago Stadium. McCaslin, who died in 2013, went on to have a distinguished high-school coaching career, which ended with a successful 23-year run at Arroyo High in San Lorenzo, California. While at Bellingham High, he was 5-0 lifetime against his high school coach, Bremerton’s Ken Wills.
Marla Morey: A longtime junior high teacher and coach in the Central Kitsap School District, the 1974 South Kitsap grad came along at a time when the Girls Athletic Association (GAA) was the only outlet for organized sports for female athletes. (Title IX became law in 1972, but high schools and colleges didn’t have to comply with the law until 1975). Morey started on the volleyball and basketball teams at Olympic College, and has coached volleyball, basketball and softball at the junior high, high school and community college levels for more than 30 years.
Steve Reischman: An undersized all-league offensive lineman and linebacker at West Bremerton, he was a starter on the 1972 Central Washington football team that was 9-1 and won an Evergreen Conference title. Reischman coached 26 years at South Kitsap, and was an integral part of Ed Fisher’s staff when the Wolves boasted one of the top high-school football programs on the West Coast. He helped develop offensive lineman like Benji Olson, Tony Coats and Andrew Peterson, who all went on to play in the NFL. Reischman served as athletic director at the state’s largest high school for six more years.
Brock Stodden: The blue-collar boxer with the colorful nickname — “The Bremerton Butcher” — vowed to win a championship belt in honor of a friend who died of leukemia. It look him nine years to do it, but he won the Canadian-American-Mexican super middle championship in April 2006 in Billings, Montana. Stodden never shied away from a tough opponent, especially late in his career, and finished with an 18-17-1 record with nine knockouts. Stodden headlined three boxing shows in Kitsap County and fought regularly at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma early in his pro career, which started as a middleweight in December of 1999. His last fight was in September 2010 in Puerto Rico against Victor Bisbel, a former Olympian with a 17-1 record.
Ryan Young: The North Kitsap grad was the Narrows League Bridge Division MVP in basketball in 2005, when he averaged 19.8 points and 10.1 rebounds, but the 6-foot-5 athlete made his mark in track and field. The two-time state javelin champ broke the school record at Cal with a throw of 251 feet. He competed in the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials and had a career-best throw of 262-2 while competing as a pro in Amsterdam.
Team Inductees
Two of the best high school teams to come out of Kitsap County will be also be honored:
1961 West Bremerton football: The Wildcats were mythical state champs, as decided by sportswriters’ votes in the Associated Press and United Press International polls. Coach Chuck Semancik’s squad finished 9-1, losing 20-19 to Wilson in a game West led 19-0 at halftime. Future Washington Husky star running back Steve Bramwell and end Hershel Hauschel were all-state selections. Bruising fullback Jessie Griffin and quarterback Bob Beller were other standouts.
1996 South Kitsap baseball: The Wolves capped an unbeaten season (23-0) with a 13-4 thumping of Richland in the Class 4A state championship game at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma. Future major leaguers Willie Bloomquist and Jason Ellison led the way for what might have been one of the best teams in state history. Bloomquist, Ellison (20-0 as a pitcher during his three-year varsity career), catcher Adam Heom, outfielder/pitchers Adam Walsh and Garrett Fisher and first baseman Ryan Smith were all first-team all-league picks. It was one of four state championship teams coached by the late Elton Goodwin. Goodwin’s longtime assistant, Don Smith (a 2002 inductee when the Kitsap Oldtimers Association was running the show), is helping get the word out to the players on that talented ’96 team.
Chuck Stark is the former sports editor of The Sun. Reach him at chuckstark00@gmail.com.
Kitsap Sports Hall of Fame banquet
When: Jan. 26 (social hour noon, induction ceremony 1 p.m.)
Where: Kiana Lodge, 14976 Sandy Hook Road, Poulsbo
Tickets: $40 ($20 for 18 and younger; free for 6 and younger). For reservations email Kitsap Athletic Roundtable secretary Jodee Strickland at jodee.strickland@aol.com)