OHSAA to recognize Circle of Champion honorees among awards

COLUMBUS — The Ohio High School Athletic Association will honor five Ohio greats during the finals of the boys basketball state championships on March 21 as part of its Circle of Champions recognition program. Among those being saluted are Pro Football Hall of Famer Orlando Pace, originally from Sandusky, as well as current and former football standouts Paris Johnson Jr. (Cincinnati) and Brady Quinn (Dublin); former Ohio State basketball All-American Frani Washington (Toledo), and current collegiate football official and former basketball official Dr. Dennis (Denny) Morris (Elida). Pace was a basketball and football standout at Sandusky High School before beginning an accomplished football career as an offensive tackle at Ohio State, where he was a two-time unanimous All-American, a two-time winner of the Lombardi Award, won the Outland Trophy and finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting. He was named the 1996 Big Ten Player of the Year. The No. 1 pick in the 1997 NFL Draft, Pace played 13 years in the NFL with the Rams and Bears. He was a seven-time Pro Bowl and five-time all-Pro selection and helped the Rams win the Super Bowl after the 1999 season and make another appearance two years later. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016. Johnson Jr. is a Cincinnati native who graduated from Princeton High School in 2019 and was twice named a first team all-Ohio offensive tackle. He attended Ohio State, where he started as a freshman in the national championship game against Alabama in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. He then started every game as a sophomore and junior and was named All-Big Ten and was a unanimous All-American as a left tackle as a junior. Selected sixth in the first round of the NFL draft by Arizona in 2023, Johnson has started 43 games with the Cardinals, the last two years at left tackle. Quinn graduated from Dublin Coffman High School, throwing for over 4,300 yards and 46 touchdowns his last two years at quarterback and helping the Shamrocks win the 2001 state baseball championship. He went on to star at quarterback for Notre Dame, where he started for four years; was an All-American as a junior and senior, and won the Sammy Baugh Trophy, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award and the Maxwell Award during his career. He also finished in the top four in Heisman Trophy voting twice. A first-round draft pick of the Browns in 2007, he spent parts of seven seasons in the NFL with six different teams. Since 2019, Quinn has served as a college football analyst for Big Noon Kickoff on Fox, and he does additional work analyzing or discussing both college football and the NFL for Fox and other networks. Washington was a pioneer in girls sports in the 1970s. A three-sport star at Toledo Woodward High School, she was first team All-Ohio in basketball as a senior and was named the Toledo City League Player-of-the-Year. As a junior, Washington competed in the first OHSAA girls state track & field tournament and was on state championship and state runner-up relay teams, and she led the Polar Bears to the first-ever OHSAA big-school girls state basketball championship in 1976. Washington went on to play basketball at Ohio State and helped the Buckeyes win the Big Ten championship in 1978 and became the school's first All-American in women's basketball a year later. She resides in her hometown of Toledo. Morris is a distinguished football and basketball official. In basketball, he has served as an OHSAA Basketball Rules Interpreter since 2005 and has been the Association's Director of Officiating Development for Basketball since 2010. During his career, he has officiated the OHSAA state boys basketball finals three times. In football, Morris officiated at the high school level for more than four decades, moved to the Mid-American Conference in 1997 and has been a back judge in the Big Ten Conference since 2002. He has officiated 24 post-season bowl games. A graduate from Elida High School, Bowling Green State and the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine, Dr. Morris retired three years ago as the chief medical officer and vice president of medical affairs for the Lima Memorial Health System. Other awards will be presented during various times at this year's boys state tournament. The honorees are as follows: The OHSAA will recognize award winners from the Ohio School Boards Association (OSBA), Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators (OASSA) and the Buckeye Association of School Administrators (BASA). Three from OSBA's five-person 2025-26 All-School Boards team will be recognized: Sally Green from Tuscarawas Valley Local Schools; Sue Larimer from Perrysburg Exempted Village Schools, and Rachel Ray from Fayetteville-Perry Local Schools. Also being recognized are OASSA's 2025-26 Principal-of-the-Year, Michael King from Geneva High School; OASSA's 2025-26 Middle School Principal-of-the-Year, Misty Goetz from Milford Junior High School, and BASA's 2025-26 Superintendent-of-the-Year, Paul Otten from Beavercreek City Schools. The 2026 National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) Ohio Service Award for outstanding contributions to interscholastic athletics will be presented to Melvin Blake, who has provided extraordinary service the last 13 years as the manager of the state softball tournament held at Akron Firestone Stadium. He has been involved with that tournament every year since it moved to Akron in 2008. The sports and athletics coordinator with the City of Akron Recreation & Parks Division for the past 12 of his 26 years with that department, Blake has also been the manager of OHSAA regional softball tournaments at Firestone Stadium for the past 10 years. The OHSAA Naismith Meritorious Service awards are presented annually to individuals for their contributions to the sport of basketball or interscholastic athletics. They will go to 2025 recipient Rock VanFossen, former coach, administrator and OHSAA Board of Directors member from Sandy Valley and Strasburg-Franklin high schools; 2026 recipient Mark McGuire, former coach, administrator and current OHSAA Northeast District Athletic Board treasurer from Elyria Catholic, Elyria and Solon high schools, and 2026 recipient Gary Kreinbrink, former coach, administrator and OHSAA Board of Directors member from Leipsic High School who began his career at Howard East Knox. The 2026 OHSAA Coaches Sportsmanship, Ethics and Integrity awards for boys basketball will go to Terry Rowe, head coach for the past 10 years at Sugarcreek Garaway High School, located in Eastern Ohio in Tuscarawas County, who has been coaching for 26 years overall. Two Ohio Athletic Trainers Association (OATA) trainers-of-the-year that will be recognized during the tournament are Erick Boucher, part of the OhioHealth Sports Medicine team who is the head athletic trainer at Columbus Bishop Watterson High School, and Maddie Legerski, also with OhioHealth Sports Medicine who serves as the head athletic trainer at Grizzell Middle School in Dublin. Three 2026 inductees into the Ohio Prep Sports Media Association Hall of Fame will be recognized, Denny McPherson, Dan Messerschmidt and Tom Puskar. McPherson has been involved with high school and youth sports in Marion County for 46 years while also becoming one of the state's leading bowling writers along the way. He spent 36 years as a sportswriter for the Marion Star before retiring in 2015. Messerschmidt covered sports for the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum for 30 years before transitioning in 2017 to the North Central Ohio Media group (Saga Communications), which encompasses WQEL and WBCO radio stations. Puskar is an award-winning photojournalist with nearly 40 years of experience. He spent 33 years at the Ashland Times-Gazette, including 26 years as chief photographer. The Ohio High School Basketball Coaches Association (OHSBCA) will recognize several coaches who have hit certain milestones in victories and/or consecutive years in the profession plus several service award winners. Among the OHSBCA honorees is Jim Rucki, who is the recipient of both the 2026 Paul Walker Award, presented annually to a coach who has made significant contributions to the sport in Ohio, and the Morgan Wootten Lifetime Achievement Award. Rucki retired last season with 545 career wins after spending most of his 35 years coaching at Findlay High School after starting at Rocky River. The 2026 John Wooden Legacy Award boys winner is Dave Close, who retired last year after 37 seasons at his alma mater, Stow-Munroe Falls, and had over 600 career wins. In addition, Eric Flannery, head boys coach at Lakewood St. Edward High School, will be recognized as Ohio's 2024-25 nominee for the National Federation of State High School Association's boys coach-of-the-year. During last week's OHSAA girls basketball championships, recognized were the following: — The 2026 OHSAA Coaches Sportsmanship, Ethics and Integrity awards for girls basketball was presented to Mark Gregory, who has spent the past 10 years at Convoy Crestview High School, where he has taken two teams since 2021 to the OHSAA state tournament. — Another OHSBCA honoree was Dennis Schrock, who was the 2026 John Wooden Legacy Award girls winner. He spent the majority of his 42-year career as the head coach at Doylestown Chippewa High School. Schrock retired in 2023 with 723 wins and finished as state runners-up twice. — The Morgan Wootten Lifetime Achievement Award girls winner was Dave Schlabach. Dave won 689 games and captured six state championships over 30 years as the head coach at Berlin Hiland before retiring in 2021. — Also recognized was the Ohio nominee and winner of the 2024-25 National Federation of State High School Association's girls coach-of-the-year Chris Hart, head coach at Kettering Archbishop Alter High School, where her teams have won five OHSAA state championships.