Five members, two Friends of Sport and a 1979 baseball team will join the ranks of Springfield’s best March 2 when the 20th annual Springfield Sports Hall of Fame Banquet is held at the Crowne Plaza.

LPGA Hall of Famer Nancy Lopez will be the featured speaker. Tickets, priced at $35, can be reserved by calling Lesa Schaive at 529-0008.

The newest Hall of Famers are 1948 Springfield High School graduate Bob Greeley, Southeast alums Kent Hammond and McKay Smith and Griffin graduates Mike Steele and David Reid.

Named as Friends of Sport were Sandra Dehner Wheeler and Jim Smith. And the 1979 Kelley Construction Thorobred baseball team also will be honored.

GREELEY, who died Sept. 28 in Atlanta at the age of 79, was the city’s leading scorer as a Springfield High senior in 1948 and an all-city selection. He received a basketball scholarship to Wisconsin, and he also was involved in sailing.

HAMMOND graduated from Southeast in 1970 after earning second-team all-city honors in basketball as a sophomore and junior and first team as a senior. In football he was all-city and all-conference as a junior and senior, and he was Southeast’s MVP as a senior. Later he took up slow-pitch softball. He began to officiate basketball in 1971 and football in 1972, and he officiated the Class A State Basketball Tournament in 1996, 1997 and 1999. In 2003, his crew worked the Class 4A state football title game in Champaign.

REID, a 1968 Griffin graduate, earned all-city honors in football and baseball and started on the basketball team. He attend Southern Illinois-Carbondale from 1968-71 on a football scholarship and was SIU’s leading receiver as a junior and senior. He won the team’s Most Valuable Receiver Award, was a two-year starter and a three-year letter-winner, won numerous individual game football awards and was honorary co-captain.

McKAY SMITH, was Southeast’s all-time leading scorer with 1,107 points when he graduated in 1977 and headed for Illinois State University on a basketball scholarship. He earned four letters for the Redbirds and served as team co-captain his final two seasons, 1980 and ’81. The 1980 team made an NIT appearance.

STEELE, a 1974 Griffin graduate, played football for two years, ran cross country for two years and played basketball and golf for four years. He led the city in scoring as a senior, when he was a unanimous first-team all-city selection, All-Capitol Conference and special mention all-state by the Chicago Daily News.

He was a four-year starter on the golf team and the team’s No. 1 player as a sophomore, junior and senior. In 1974, he placed sixth in the 36-hole Illinois Insurance Classic. He received a golf scholarship to Purdue and played on the varsity from 1974-78. He earned three letters in golf at Purdue. He played in six Illinois State Amateur Tournaments, three Illinois Opens and four Missouri Opens and tied for fifth place at the Missouri Open in 1981. He once shot a 65 at Auburn’s Edgewood Golf Course. He was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia in 1978 and died in 1986 at the age of 30.

JIM SMITH became involved with Little League Baseball in 1974 as a manager in the Dale Teubner Little League and has been a part of the program since. He has been league president and served six three-year terms as district administrator. In 1984 he became a coach for the Northeast Cowboys in the Springfield Junior Football League, and by 1996 he was president and chairman of the board (he served nine terms in that capacity).

He coached basketball at Wilcox and Owen Marsh, was a youth softball coach and since 1998 has served as an assistant football coach at Rochester. He’s also been a part of the Memorial Stadium chain gang and has coached baseball at Rochester, Ursuline and Lutheran high schools.

WHEELER’s principal contribution to the sports community was her tenure as Executive Director of the Rail Charity Golf Classic (now State Farm Classic) from 1980 through 2005.  Under her guidance, the LPGA tournament has lasted in Springfield since 1976 to the point of being one of the longest-running tournaments on the LPGA Tour.  Total charitable contributions while she served as executive director exceeded $2 million. She also served on the LPGA Tournament Sponsors Association Board of Directors from 1990 to 1995 and served as its secretary and vice president.

THE 1979 KELLEY CONSTRUCTION squad was an all-star team of players ages 17-23 that competed in the 1979 Catfish Hunter Thorobred World Series in Norfolk, Va. The team was coached by John Schaive and Don Robinson, and players included Dan Callahan, Tim Hulett, Bill Lamkey, Scott Lovekamp, John Schaive, Jack Stroud, Chris Collins, Mark Erickson, Tom Feiden, John Fox, Brad Gibbs, Paul Kramer, Ron Lamkey, Bob Meckes, Clyde Oliver and Jay Suits. The team advanced to the World Series with a .417 team batting average.