NFHS Hall of Fame inductees include Mauer, Spikes

Four outstanding former high school athletes, including Joe Mauer, a three-sport standout at Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, before his celebrated career with the Minnesota Twins, highlight the 2024 class of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) National High School Hall of Fame.

Joining the four former athletes in this year’s class are four highly successful high school coaches, two former state association administrators and one contest official. The 11 honorees will be inducted July 1 during the 41st induction ceremony of the National High School Hall of Fame, which will be held at the 105th NFHS Summer Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

At Cretin-Derham Hall High School, Joe Mauer batted .567 with 43 home runs and struck out only once in 222 at-bats. He led Cretin-Derham Hall to a state football title as a junior and to a state baseball title as a senior.

The other three former athletes in the 2024 class are Takeo Spikes, who as a two-way football player (tight end, linebacker) helped Washington County High School in Sandersville, Georgia to a 15-0 mark and a state championship in 1994; Tyrone Wheatley, who was one of the greatest multi-sport high school athletes in Michigan history during his career at Dearborn Heights Robichaud High School in the late 1980s; and Dot Ford Burrow, who scored 82 points in a basketball game for Smithville (Mississippi) High School in 1949-50 when she averaged almost 50 points a game and was making headlines long before her grandson, Joe Burrow.

The four coaches in this year’s class have coached an astounding combined 194 years (48.5 average) and claimed a total of 43 state championships in volleyball, football, swimming and baseball. These four remarkable individuals include Paula Kirkland, who was won 1,088 volleyball matches at Dorman High School in Roebuck, South Carolina, and led her teams to 15 state championships in 43 years; Gary Rankin, the winningest high school football coach in Tennessee history during his 42-year career in which he has led teams to 17 state championships at four different schools; Roy Snyder, who started the swimming program at Wilson High School in West Lawn, Pennsylvania, in 1964 and has 611 victories and four state championships in an amazing 59 years; and Ronald Vincent, who won the 1,000^th baseball game of his career last year at J. H. Rose High School in Greenville, North Carolina and has led his teams to seven state titles in 50 years.

The official in this year’s class is David Gore, a baseball and football official from Norman, Oklahoma, for 37 and 35 years, respectively, who officiated nine Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association state football championship games.

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The above is an issued press release from the NFHS. To read the full press release from the NFHS, click here.