NC State has announced their first round of Hall of Game inductees…

Genia Beasley, Women’s Basketball, 1977-80
Ted Brown, Football, 1975-78
Everett Case, Men’s Basketball (coach), 1946-64
Roman Gabriel, Football, 1958-61
Tab Ramos, Men’s Soccer, 1984-87
Jim Ritcher, Football, 1976-79
Julie Shea, Women’s cross country, Track & Field, 1977-80
David Thompson, Men’s Basketball, 1972-75
Jim Valvano, Men’s Basketball  (coach), 1980-90
Kay Yow, Women’s Basketball (coach),1975-2009

As with any Hall of Fame, usually the first round or two of inductees is the easiest with the following groupings being more controversial.  For the most part, there aren’t any real surprises here.  Two important things that I noticed:

1) We didn’t over-do the PC aspect of sports.  There may be a good cross-section of men’s and women’s sports, but we didn’t go out of our way to find people who were in the “Varsity Underwater Basket-Weaving Team” in the name of saying we weren’t being partial towards football or basketball.  This was, personally, a concern of mine, but it appears all the decisions held pretty closely to who the average “informed” fan would pick if they had a choice.

2) Jimmy Valvano is finally getting recognized by the university.  I’ve always gotten embarrassed by the way NC State treats Jimmy Valvano and our lack of recognition for him accomplishments.  I still feel like we need to name something after him (court, facility, et al), but inducting him along with Case in the first class of inductees is a good start.  I’m not too up-in-arms over Sloan not making the cut over Valvano simply because of the emotional connection Valvano has to the identity of the school and our history.

If you want to see a great list of who “could have” been on the list or who “may be” put on the list, check out AkulaWolf’s list here.  The ceremony for NC State’s Hall of Fame will be October 5th in Reynolds.