A big weekend and beyond: NM Sports Hall of Fame turns 50

Next weekend won’t be your grandfather’s New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame weekend, though grandpa probably remembers many of the people to be honored.

Gramps, in fact, and grandma as well, probably know some of them personally.

This year marks the Hall of Fame’s 50th anniversary, and board president Marty Saiz and his fellow board members have taken steps to make it special.

The induction class of 2023, the 50th, includes:

• George Brooks, longtime UNM ski coach, who led the Lobos to a national championship, the school’s first in any sport, in 2004.
• Amber Campbell, a three-time U.S. Olympian in the hammer throw, who grew up in Tucumcari.
• Charlie Criss, a former New Mexico State basketball star — a starter on the 1970 Aggies team that made the Final Four — who went on to an eight-year career in the NBA.
• Larry Hays, a Dora, New Mexico, native and a two-sport star at Eastern New Mexico who coached Lubbock Christian to an NAIA baseball title and went on to have 20 winning seasons in 22 seasons as the baseball coach at Texas Tech.
• The late Frank Maestas, a four-sport athlete at West Las Vegas High School and a sports journalist who worked for the Santa Fe New Mexican and the Albuquerque Journal in a career that spanned more than three decades.
• The late Jim Marshall, who coached New Mexico Highlands and the College of the Southwest to 619 baseball victories.
• Glover Quin, former UNM cornerback who played 10 years in the NFL for the Houston Texans and Detroit Lions.
• Klaus Weber, who coached skiing, soccer and tennis during a long coaching career at the college, prep and club levels.

The deadline to purchase tickets for Sunday’s banquet, priced at $50 per person or $500 per table, is Saturday (June 15).

“Right now (as of Tuesday evening), we’re at about 750 to 800,” Saiz said. “My goal is 1,000, so I’m hoping we can hit that in the next few days.”

Saiz and the board are thinking bigger than that, though, having invited every living past inductee to attend this year’s events. More than 50, he said, have accepted. The NMSHOF is paying for hotel accommodations for those attending from out of town.

“My goal was (to stage) the biggest celebrity sports event ever (in the state), and I think we’ve got it,” he said.

The annual VIP dinner on Friday (June 21), which in the past has been limited to just 30 people or so, has been expanded to include some 175 to 200 at Santa Ana Casino Hotel.

Live and silent auctions will be conducted as fund-raisers for the NMSHOF’s designated charities, ALS research (past NMSHOF president Gene Pino has lived with ALS since 2011) and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Fe/Del Norte, as well as for scholarships in the names of former NMSHOF President Theo Barela, former Albuquerque Academy boys basketball coach Mike Brown and original NMSHOF board member Oscar “Mahlon” Love.

On Saturday, the Hall of Fame’s eighth annual Charity Golf Classic will tee off at Santa Ana. Afterward, Saiz said, golfers and inductees — past and present — will be treated to an evening at Quezada’s Comedy Club & Cantina.

On Sunday, induction day, a reception will be held from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at the Albuquerque Convention Center.

“We’ll have a another silent auction there, too,” Saiz said.

The annual induction banquet will follow.

Saiz, though, is thinking well past Saturday and the 50th anniversary. He and board members are formulating plans for a possible New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame Museum.

“We’re in the early stages,” Saiz said, but added that he and board member Frank Castillo have met with Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller on the issue.

Saiz envisions the museum as something more than somewhere people might go to just once and never return.

“I want it to be kind of an events center,” he said, “where you can have functions, you can have celebrities come in and speak to the public and raise money for charities. And I want it to be self-sufficient.”