The Carbon County Hall of Sports Hall of Fame committee will hold its 2025 induction dinner and program on Sunday, May 25, at the Franklin Township Volunteer Fire Company hall.

The ceremony will honor 17 inductees from five Carbon County communities and Coaldale and Tamaqua who were selected for the honor by committees representing each of the towns. The doors will open at 12:30 p.m. and the banquet will commence at 1:45.

The inductees include:

Coaldale: Dennis Gildea and Sami Vavra.

Jim Thorpe: Cory Cinicola, Justin Young and Chris “Chopper” Figura.

Lansford: Bob Thomas and Charles “Sparky” Williams; special recognition: Brenda Banks.

Lehighton: Roger Neff, Jean Buskirk and Thomas A. Schaeffer.

Nesquehoning: Frank J. Damian, Bobby Agosti and Elizabeth “Lisa” (Evans) Johnson.

Summit Hill: Casey Lawrence and Richard D. Smith Jr.

Tamaqua: Michael W. Hromyak Jr. and Jon Bonner.

Tickets to the event are available from the following: Dan 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 Times News will begin running the biographies of the inductees by town on Saturdays. The inductees representing Coaldale are as follows:

Dr. Dennis Gildea

(By Mary Gildea Mack)

Growing up in Coaldale, everyone had a nickname. There were Sneeks, Angel, Puppo and Bones, to name few. There was one person who did not have a nickname. He was just Dennis. It wasn’t until he met his wife, Constance, who Dennis called CW, that he got his first nickname. He was D. Gildea. It was many years until he got his next moniker. It was, I am told, the highest honor one can receive on the Springfield Campus. And that was the nickname that the students gave Dennis — Coach Gildea.

But before we get to that portion of the story, we must return to Dennis as a sportswriter for the Pennsylvania Mirror (or Mirrow, as Dennis called it) at State College.

According to an article written by Thomas Brenner for the Center Daily Times, Dennis, who covered sports for the paper as well as feature stories and anything else that was needed, walked into the newsroom one day and was told by the editor that he had six pages that needed to be filled. Dennis replied that he only writes when has something to say. And, with that, he went to an empty office and created his alter ego, T. Wes Brillik.

Thaddeus Westmoreland Brillik lived on top of Mount Nittany with his girlfriend Mimsy, a topless dancer, and drank Utica Club beer. Brillik always picked the Nits (Nittany Lions) to lose. And he never met a word he didn’t spell phonetically instead of correctly.

Always predicting a loss, Brillik angered Coach Joe Paterno and the players who long sought his identity. Dennis’ wife, CW, tells of seeing Paterno on Sunday mornings at the Nittany Lion Inn when they would arrive for breakfast. Paterno always complained to Dennis about T. Wes Brillik’s latest column. Never knowing that he was speaking to Brillik’s alter ego.

The real identity of T. Wes Brillik was not made known until 2020.

When Title IX passed, which protected women, Dennis pioneered coverage of women’s athletics in State College. He included women’s sports in his reporting at the Mirror and later at the Center Daily Times. After getting his Ph.D. in Communications at Penn State, he took a job teaching and advising the student newspaper at Marist. He lost that job because he defended his staff on a matter of principle.

That brings is to Springfield College and Coach Gildea. When Dennis arrived at Springfield College in the 1990s before there was a journalism major, he saw an opportunity, got to work, and created COSJ, the major in Communication and Sports Journalism, from scratch. To quote a fellow professor, Marty Dobrow, “He was the person that conceptualized the major. He was the person that convinced the powers that be to want this major. That’s a difficult thing to do; change in higher education is a slow process, sometimes a glacial process. And he had a lot of people that he needed to convince.”

One of Dennis’ students said of him, “Gildea was a professor, journalist and human being with a focus on his impact on his students... Gildea always kept a strong investment in his students long after they departed Alden Street.”

This brings us back to nicknames. Shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer that would take his life, he and CW were visiting my daughter in Switzerland. They had been to France, where Dennis spoke at a symposium. Dennis and Jasper, his nephew, were playing a fierce game of Old Maid. Eight-year-old Jasper speaks German and English and struggled to keep them separate at that age. Jasper had been hearing CW refer to Dennis as D. Gildea, so, on achieving victory, he turns to Dennis and says, “Dingle Dink, you’re the Old Maid.” His misunderstanding of what CW was saying gave Dennis the best nickname ever. For a few short months before he died, Dennis was proudly known as Dingle Dink.

As a graduate student, Dennis earned the Roberta Park Graduate Essay Award (1992) from the North American Society for Sports History for his essay “Counterpunch: The Morrison-Heenan Fight of 1858 and the Frank Queen’s Attack on the ‘Responsible Press.’”

One of his last articles was “The Rise and Fall of National Sports Daily,” a chapter in “Replays, Rivalries and Rumbles.” And the book he is most proud of is “Hoop Crazy: The Lives of Claire Bee and Chip Hilton.” It’s a story of disgraced basketball coach Bee, who, through his character Chip Hilton, taught a generation of boys how they should live and play.

His short story “Dancing at the Speed of Light” was just published by Aethlon: The Journal of Sports Literature. Springfield’s COSJ is flourishing, and its graduates are succeeding in TV and print journalism. The school also established a scholarship in Dennis’ name.

Finally, there is a proposal for a book comprising Dennis’ many columns.

Dennis published a book, “Hoop Crazy,” about the lives of Clair Bee and Chip Hilton.

Sami Vavra

Sami Vavra compiled numerous district, state and collegiate honors as a champion swimmer through the latter part of the 2000s.

In District 11 competition, she assisted her Panther Valley teammates in winning the 2008 AA girls’ team championship, and they followed it up with a silver medal in the 2009 AA team competition.

But for Sami, her four-year high school career (2006-2009) was filled with a variety of medals, 16 in all, including nine gold, six silver and one bronze. In 2006, she won district gold medals in the 200 medley relay and 200 freestyle relay, as well as the gaining silver medals in the 200 individual medley and 100 breaststroke. The following year, she again finished first in the 200 medley relay and 200 freestyle, and copped the silver medal in the 100 breaststroke and the bronze medal in the 200 individual medley.

As a junior in 2008, Sami was a gold medal recipient in the 200 medley relay and 200 freestyle relay, and a silver medalist in the 200 individual medley and 100 breaststroke. Then as a senior, she won the gold in the 200 individual medley, 100 breaststroke and 200 freestyle relay, and the silver medal in the 200 medley relay.

Her state competition performances were equally impressive, as she was a member of the 2007 AA state runner-up team; and won silver medals in the 200 medley relay and 100 breaststroke, finishing just behind her sister, who won the gold medal – a historic 1-2 finish that remains one of the few, if not only, by sisters in PIAA history.

Sami went on to a prolific career at East Stroudsburg University, where she was named the university’s Most Valuable Athlete (Swimmer) in the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 seasons.

She set numerous school records, including the 100 breaststroke in a time of 1:06.09 during the 2013 PSAC Championships in 2013; 50 breaststroke, 30:52, recorded as the split during the 100 breaststroke; and relay records in the 200 free, 400 free, 200 medley and 400 medley races.

During the 2013 PSAC championships, she finished in fifth place with a record-setting time of 1:06.09 in the 2013 final, and in 2012, she was an eighth place finisher in the 100 breaststroke with a then-school record time of 1:06.70 in the preliminaries.

Sami ranked in ESU’s top 10 in the 100 breaststroke, 50 breaststroke, 100 backstroke, 200 breaststroke, 100 individual medley and 200 individual medley.