The Carbon County Sports Hall of Fame will hold its 28th Annual Induction Ceremony on Sunday, May 28, at the Franklin Township Fire Company hall.

Doors will open at 12:30 p.m. and the banquet will begin at 1:45.

Tickets to the dinner program are $35 for adults and $15 for children under 12 and can be purchased from the following committee members: Danny McGinley, 570-325-3550, Vince Spisak, 570-645-4542, Jake Boyer, 610-751-6634, Trevor Lawrence, 570-645-4722, Bill Gardiner, 570-669-6564, Bob Gelatko, 570-645-7565, and Evan Evans, 570-645-7716.

The 2023 inductees include:

Coaldale: Bob Urban, Jeff Nietz and the late Kathy (Radocha) Gelatko.

Jim Thorpe: A.J. Petrucci Jr., Mike Paulas and Irene Sebelin Serignese.

Lansford: Tony Zonca, Frank Bydlon and Gina Uher-Lee.

Lehighton: Steven Hawk, the late Marvin J. Barry and George Harris.

Nesquehoning: Jack Corby, Matt Maradeo and Joel Hunsicker.

Summit Hill: Jack O’Gurek and Dan Matika.

The Coaldale inductees are:

Cathy (Radocha) Gelatko

Title IX, the federal anti-discrimination act that revolutionized female athletics, hadn’t been thought about until its passage in 1972, but the lack of it certainly didn’t stop Cathy (Radocha) Gelatko of Coaldale from gaining all star status on the basketball court about a decade earlier.

Playing in the era of six-on-six for girls’ basketball back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Cathy was a stellar player both in the Panther Valley Catholic Youth Organization and Marian Catholic High School programs, being a prolific scorer who not only consistently scored in double figures, but often was the deciding factor in her team’s triumphs.

The six-on-six archaic variant of basketball followed typical basketball rules, one of the exceptions being that only forwards were allowed to shoot the ball. To their credit, the coaches at SS. Cyril and Methodius Parochial School, Coaldale, and Marian Catholic, were bright enough to position Cathy on the offensive side of the court.

Her prowess began in the 1957-58 school year, when Cathy showed up as a promising scorer, helping the parochials to defeat the older Marian All Stars, 25-24, by tallying half (12) of their points. She followed it up with a superb performance against St. Jerome’s of Tamaqua, where she outscored the Jerry gals herself, tallying 31-points in a 55-22 win.

That was only the start for the seventh grader, who went on to lead Coach George Kacik’s Royal gals to the Panther Valley CYO and Carbon-East Schuylkill District championships in her eighth grade campaign of 1958-59. Cathy scored in double figures in seven contests, including three in a row in the PV league playoffs when SS. Cyril’s won the title with three consecutive wins in which she averaged an amazing 30.3 points per game (33, 32 and 26 points, respectively).

Despite dropping a diocesan matchup against St. Casimir’s of Mahanoy City, she continued her double-digit scoring, netting 11 points, and followed it up with a 26-point game against St. Jerome’s in a 46-40 win and two 10-point games after being named to the Panther Valley All Star team that split a doubleheader with the North Schuylkill All Stars.

At Marian, games were scarce as few Catholic schools had girls’ teams, but Cathy was often the top scorer of the Marianettes. In fact, in 13 games reported by the Tamaqua Courier, Mahanoy City Record American or Lansford Evening Record, her teams went 11-2 and she averaged 15.1 points per game points per game, scoring double figures in 10 games, including 24, 19 and 16-point performances over Nativity, Immaculate Heart and Sacred Heart, respectively.

Cathy graduated from Marian in 1963 and will long be remembered as one of the top pre-Elsie Tolan era (she began coaching the Fillies in 1966) players in the girls’ program there.

She went on to graduate from East Stroudsburg State College with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and taught fifth grade in the Diocese of Allentown for more than 25 years at St. Ann’s, St. Michael’s and Our Lady of the Angels schools in Lansford. Before that, she was a second grade teacher in the Panther Valley School District.

A 2002 Courage Award winner from the Carbon-Tamaqua Unit of the American Cancer Society, Cathy passed away on July 25, 2008, after a 12-year battle with cancer.

She was the mother of four children, Marianne, married to Dwight Eisenhauer, Robert, married to Dr. Joanne Calabrese, Michael, married to Kristen Gould, and Stephen, and his companion, Erin.

Cathy passed her athletic genes to her children and grandchildren, all of whom were very active in sports. Daughter Marianne and son Michael played on the Marian Fillies basketball and Colt football teams, respectively, that won state championships, and son Stephen was a three-sport athlete there. Cathy’s grandchildren, Michael, Lexi and James, are all aspiring athletes as well.

Jeff Nietz

In 1983, Jeff Nietz, a resident of Coaldale for many years, went to Marian Catholic High School, Hometown, where he was hired to be the Director of Guidance. Having played baseball in a very successful high school program at Central Columbia and at PSUAC and NCAA Division 2 Bloomsburg State College, Jeff immediately joined Charlie Connely’s staff as a junior varsity coach, as well as having scouting duties.

In 1998, he stepped into the position of assistant coach, helping the Colts win four division championships. Together with “Chink,” they started the Marian Baseball Camp for area youths, one of the first in existence in the region.

In 1994, Jeff became the Colts’ head coach when Chink moved on to Mt. Carmel as a football coach. That year, Jeff guided the Colts to the first of many Schuylkill League division championships and went to the District 11 championship game, falling to Williams Valley. He was named Schuylkill League Small Coach of the Year.

Jeff remained the Colts’ head coach for 20 years before retiring after the 2014 season. In that time, he amassed an overall record of 275-154 while qualifying for the district playoffs 19 times. His overall record included nine Schuylkill League division championships (94, 98, 99, 01, 02, 03, 04, 06 and 11).

In 2011, Jeff guided the Colts to the District 11 championship, defeating Minersville and reaching the PIAA state playoffs, where they finished in the Elite Eight. That year, he was rewarded with his second Schuylkill League Small School Coach of the Year honor.

In the last six years of his coaching career, six of Nietz’s players were named to the first and second teams of the Pennsylvania State High School Baseball Coaches Association All State All Star Teams.

In addition to his coaching duties at Marian, Jeff was one of the founding members of the Anthracite Baseball Coaches Association and served as secretary/treasurer throughout its existence. He was also a member of the Pennsylvania State High School Baseball Coaches Association Board of Officers.

Jeff was inducted into the Marian High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2014 as the winningest baseball coach in the history of the school.

He is married to the former Rita DeFebo and lives in Coaldale. They have three children, Scott, Frank and Lauren.

Jeff received a BA degree in sociology from Bloomsburg, a master’s degree in counselor education from Penn State University, a master’s degree in technology education from Wilkes University, and was awarded his Ph.D in 2005.

Jeff is a longtime educator, serving as a guidance counselor, student information systems coordinator, student registration and child accounting coordinator, guidance chairperson and adjunct professor, having taught graduate classes in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Bloomsburg until retiring in 2015.

He currently holds the position of head baseball coach at Penn State Hazleton, where he also served as the athletic recruiting coordinator for all athletics. He also works as a technological consultant doing PIMS reports for school districts and is a baseball color analyst for high school baseball games for Blue Ridge Cable TV 13.

Robert Urban

Robert “Bob” Urban, who transitioned from playing sports in the Coal Region to covering them for several newspapers, is the latest Coaldale native to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

A son of the late Frank and Mary Urban, he grew up playing CYO basketball for St. Mary’s in Coaldale, where he served as an altar boy and earned the American Legion’s Scholar-Athlete Award. He also played baseball in the Coaldale Church League, one year hitting .600, which was third in the league.

At Coaldale High School, Bob played defensive end and tight end on the football team and competed in the high and low hurdles, the mile run and the long jump on the track and field team.

In his senior year of football, playing against rival Nesquehoning, he blocked two punts and returned two other blocked punts for touchdowns in a 32-0 win.

He earned an all-star roster spot in the 1961 Schuylkill County Dream Game featuring the top players in the county. Playing for the south team, he caught a 15-yard touchdown pass in a 27-0 victory.

During Coaldale Youth Week in 1962, he was chosen to be the borough’s youth mayor.

He attended Bloomsburg University before taking his first journalism job as the sports editor and general assignment reporter for the Tamaqua Courier. In his three years there, he covered all high school sports involving Coaldale, Tamaqua and Marian, and the first year of Panther Valley sports.

Bob then moved to Pottstown in Montgomery County to be the sports editor of the Pottstown Mercury. After two years, he was promoted to city editor and worked his way up to be the managing editor and then editor during his last two decades there.

While he was the editor, the Mercury won many state and national awards, including the Super Bowl of journalism – the Pulitzer Prize.

Individually, he won more than a dozen newspaper awards, mainly for editorial and column writing.

He was named Pottstown’s Humanitarian of the Year in 1985 for writing a series of editorials on racist policies and practices being conducted by a local fire company.

He was one of the creators and organizers of the Pottstown Fourth of July Celebration, an event that drew tens of thousands each year and included a parade, fireworks and sporting events, among them being the annual Montgomery County All-Star Football Game.

Bob was one of the founders of the Pottstown Area Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.

Early in his career, he worked two years as the public relations director for the Pottstown Firebirds, a professional football team in the Atlantic Coast Football League and an affiliate of the Philadelphia Eagles. During that time, the team won the league championships in 1969 and 1970 and sent more than two dozen players to the NFL.

Bob returned to his roots in 1986 when he came back to Carbon County to be managing editor and later editor of the Times News in Lehighton, with the paper winning a number of state awards during his tenure and developing its news website. He retired in 2012.

During his career, he interviewed such notables as then-vice president Gerald Ford and sports legends such as Muhammad Ali, Joe Paterno, Tug McGraw, Pete Retzlaff and Bobby Schantz.

He currently lives in Lake Wynonah, Schuylkill County, after having lived in Summit Hill for 25 years.

Bob and his wife, the former Mary Sweeney of Lansford, have two sons, Mike and Jim, and two grandchildren, Sean and Violet.

He is also the nephew of the late Eddie Urban, a sportswriter from Coaldale and a fellow member of the Carbon County Area Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.