Athletics Hall of Fame Welcomes Seven New Members
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — The Middlebury Athletics Hall of Fame inducted seven new members at a gala awards ceremony and dinner held on November 4, 2017, in Nelson Recreation Center.
With more than 200 alumni, faculty, coaches, staff, friends, and family members in attendance, the ranks of Middlebury’s Hall of Fame grew to include 28 luminaries in the field of intercollegiate athletics. The newest class of inductees made contributions that span five decades.
Middlebury’s Hall of Fame, founded in 2014, commemorates the athletic performance and service of alumni, coaches, administrators, and staff dating back to the 1880s for men, when baseball emerged as the first varsity sport, and back to 1934 for women, when the ski team held a carnival for athletes of both genders.
President Laurie L. Patton welcomed everyone to the annual gathering that celebrates “the tradition and culture of success in athletics at Middlebury.”
In her brief remarks, the president cited three parallels between athleticism and life. She said both require a deep sense of resilience expressed through “grit, laughter, and courage”; both instill a culture “where we self-select for kindness”; and both engender an appreciation for the beauty of the natural world.
“Resilience, community, and contemplative power—that’s the Middlebury way,” Patton said before turning the microphone over to Erin Quinn ’86, director of athletics, who introduced the newest members of the Athletics Hall of Fame.
Fred Beams ’66 was a 1966 lacrosse All-American who earned All-New England honors three times for the Panthers, leading the team to a 10-0-2 record during his junior season. Beams was the school’s all-time leader in goals and assists at the time of his graduation. On the gridiron, Beams led the football team in rushing as a junior and senior, and was named to the ECAC All-East College Division squad his junior year.
Beams was introduced by Karl Lindholm ’67, who cited the athlete’s “kind, loving, funny, and passionate nature.” At Middlebury football games in the mid-1960s, Lindholm recalled, “It was often Beams to the left, Beams to the right, or a quick kick, which was also Fred Beams, since he was the punter, too.”
The recipient said he was “flattered and honored” to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and modestly used his time at the podium to praise the athletic accomplishments of some of his fellow inductees. As the member of two team sports, he commented that his success was wholly dependent upon his teammates “who, to their credit, stuck with athletics all of those years.”
Julia Bergofsky McPhee ’02 was a member of four national championship teams at Middlebury: three in lacrosse and one in field hockey. Bergofsky was a two-time All-American in lacrosse who was named IWLCA Player of the Year in 2002 and Midfielder of the Year in 2001. Her teams earned a combined 65-2 record with three undefeated seasons ending in NCAA Championships. In field hockey, her team won the program’s first NCAA Championship (1998) with a 17-1 mark, and she earned All-New England honors as a senior.
Missy Foote, her coach in both sports, said Bergofsky possesses “an intangible extra dimension, which I can only describe as her pure sureness of heart.” She was “poetry in motion” on the field of play, “and whatever decision she made, a goal was likely to be the result.” Her confidence in her ability and her eagerness to execute combined to make her an exceptional student-athlete, Foote said. “She set the standard for Middlebury College women’s lacrosse.”
The recipient thanked Middlebury College for “the honor of representing this amazing school.” She told stories from her playing days, remembered her mother’s advice to “be aggressive and don’t be afraid to make mistakes,” and recalled how Coach Foote often said, “There is no such thing as bad weather. Just inappropriate clothing.”
Dates Fryberger ’63, the youngest of Middlebury’s three hockey-playing Fryberger brothers from Duluth, Minn., was a two-time All-American who led the nation in goals as a junior with 56—the third-highest single-season mark in NCAA history. The following season, Fryberger scored 43 goals to finish with 160 in his career, which ranked second at the time in the history of collegiate hockey. He was a member of the 1964 U.S. Olympic hockey team, playing in all seven games in Innsbruck and scoring twice in a win over Germany.
Retired Middlebury hockey coach Bill Beaney recalled that the Fryberger name was synonymous with college hockey in the 1960s when the three brothers played at Middlebury under coach Walter “Duke” Nelson. “With his world-class skating skills, stickhandling prowess, and natural scoring ability,” Beaney said, “Dates Fryberger thrilled thousands of fans in this building and inspired many young people to play the game of ice hockey.”
Fryberger thanked the family members who traveled to Vermont to attend the ceremony and commented: “How you deal with adversity with what you have been given, with self-reliance and with a directness of purpose, determines how successful you can become in sport and especially in life.”
Jennifer Hefner Carbone ’97 was a three-sport athlete at Middlebury. On the ice, her teams earned back-to-back ECAC Championships with Hefner garnering ECAC Player of the Year honors each season. She graduated as the team’s all-time leader in goals (91), assists (125), and points (216). In soccer, Hefner helped lead the team to the ECAC Tournament on two occasions, and graduated owning school records for goals (29), assists (18), and points (76). She also played two years of college lacrosse, where her teams went 26-6 with two trips to the NCAA Final Four.
The women’s ice hockey coach, Bill Mandigo, introduced Hefner and remarked that her 216 points were earned at a time when about one-third of Middlebury’s games were played against Division I opponents (such as Cornell, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Brown). Many of Hefner’s school records have been eclipsed in the 20 years since she graduated, but she still holds the marks for most goals (6) and points (8) in a single game, and most assists (43) in a single season.
In her remarks, Hefner said Middlebury’s best and most enduring quality is its sense of community. She recalled how Coach Mandigo implored his players “to control the things that you can control. He taught us it’s all about focus. Tuning out the noise and doing what you can do to accomplish your goal.”
G. Thomas Lawson served 30 years as a coach and athletics administrator at Middlebury and was instrumental in the advancement of women’s athletics. His men’s soccer teams earned a 48-26-8 mark in eight years, including a 9-0-1 team in 1972 and an 11-1 squad in 1973. Following the 1972 season, he was named the New England Soccer Coach of the Year. Lawson also won more than 100 games as the men’s basketball coach, and during his 20 years as Middlebury’s director of athletics, the College added seven women’s sports.
Erin Quinn, athletic director, said Lawson turned the men’s basketball program around in the 1970s. Prior to his tenure, the team had recorded 49 wins and 232 losses from 1956 to 1970, but in the next eight years with Lawson at the helm (1970–1978) the team went 107-81. Quinn also spoke about Lawson’s attention to women’s sports. “Tom was a post-Title IX visionary,” said Quinn, “who ushered in an era of excellence in women’s athletics.”
Lawson said he was proud to be the first non-alumnus to be inducted in the Middlebury Athletics Hall of Fame. “It’s a lifetime achievement award for me.” He added, “The most important part of Middlebury is the people here,” and he spoke about how local residents Butch Varno and Peter Kohn inspired coaches and players for decades, and how it felt to follow in the footsteps of noble predecessors Duke Nelson and Dick Colman.
Mike Noonan ’83 was a two-time All-American as a defender on the men’s soccer team. His teams earned two ECAC Tournament appearances with a combined record of 17-6-4. Noonan was a team captain and anchor of one of the region’s top defenses. Following his playing days, Noonan coached at Wheaton and UNH before taking over the reins at Brown, where his team won 160 games and eight Ivy League titles and made 10 NCAA Tournament appearances over a 15-year period. He has served as the head coach at Clemson since 2010, guiding the squad to the NCAA Championship match in 2015.
Noonan could not attend the induction ceremony because his Clemson team was in the quarterfinals of the ACC soccer tournament in North Carolina the following day. (Clemson defeated Duke, 1–0.) Noonan’s former Middlebury coaches, Ron McEachen and Dave Saward, sent comments that were read by Erin Quinn, and his sister Mary Alma Noonan ’82 accepted the award on Mike’s behalf and read his prepared remarks.
“Now as a professional educator and coach,” Noonan wrote, “I attempt to replicate the experience that Middlebury athletics has given to me. The qualities and values that I learned at Middlebury on the playing fields and in the classroom provided me with the tools to teach resiliency, competitive toughness, coping with failure and success, and to continue to pursue excellence every day.”
Jed Raymond ’00 was key to the men’s lacrosse program’s rise to national prominence. The defender was a three-time first-team All-American selection and was twice named the National Defensive Player of the Year. After the 1999 season, he was named National Player of the Year by College Lacrosse USA. During his four seasons, the team rose from ECAC Champions in 1997 to NCAA Champions in 2000.
Dave Campbell ’00, Raymond’s teammate, classmate, and current coach of the men’s lacrosse program, said, “As a defender, Jed struck fear in his opponents because he knew, and they knew, that he would take the ball away from them.” No one was more driven than Raymond to succeed on the field, Campbell added. “He lived in the weight room, and he took his training and game preparation to a different level.”
Raymond commented on the character and quality of the people at Middlebury. “I didn’t know what I was looking for in life, but I knew where to find it. I found it here at Middlebury.” He commended his coaches Erin Quinn ’86 and Robert Ritter ’82; he thanked the late Peter Kohn; and he said, “Today I stand on the shoulders of giants… . I amazed at what this school produces, the character of the people that come out of here.”
Athletic Director Quinn closed Middlebury’s fourth Hall of Fame induction ceremony by paraphrasing John F. Kennedy: “Tonight Middlebury College revealed itself by the men and women it honored, and the men and women it remembered.”