Stockton Athletics Honors Its Past with Hall of Fame

Stockton’s Athletics Hall of Fame began in 2010 and has been a great source of pride for students, coaches, athletes, parents and school officials.

While Stockton University has had hundreds of stellar performances in athletics over the 50 years the school has existed, a Hall of Fame honor puts athletes, coaches and teams in an elite class, one that they treasure for the rest of their lives.

But, how did the Hall of Fame get started in the first place?

“I started working at Stockton in the 1990s,” recalls Jon Heck, the director of athletics operations at Stockton. “There was a group of us who thought it was odd we didn’t have a Hall of Fame. Our conversations would be, ‘we should have one’. Somewhere about 2006 a group of us in athletics got together and made our own committee, with the impetus of starting a Hall of Fame. So we kind of created the by-laws, what the criteria would be.”

Heck said there were probably 12 or 13 athletic staff members on that fact-finding mission, which included researching what other schools were doing. 

When Lonnie Folks took over as athletics director in December 2008, he made establishing the Hall of Fame a priority, Heck said.

“That was when it really took off,” Heck said. “It kind of was a long process.”

The Stockton Office of Athletics & Recreation held the inaugural Stockton Athletics Hall of Fame banquet at The Carriage House in Galloway on Oct. 8, 2010. The inductees included seven alumni and two former staff members. G. Larry James was honored for distinguished service and was inducted posthumously. James, who spent 36 years at Stockton as coach, athletics director and dean, died of cancer in November 2008.

Aundrea Tilly DeJonge, who graduated from Stockton in 1996, was inducted for women’s soccer in that first class. She was part of a magical 1995 Stockton team, which advanced to the NCAA Division III Final Four and remains the only Stockton team in any sport to host an NCAA Final Four and is the only Stockton women’s team in any sport to reach the Final Four.

“Being inducted into the first Stockton Hall of Fame was such an honor,” said DeJonge, a married mother of two boys. She graduated from Stockton with a degree in chemistry and was in the pharmaceutical field and is now in real estate in Charlotte, N.C. “None of it would have been possible though without my amazing teammates and coaches. I loved my years at Stockton.”

DeJonge holds Stockton women’s soccer career records for goals (61), assists (36) and points (158) and earned First Team All-America honors in 1996, becoming the first All-American in program history.

“Soccer was always an outlet in a sense for me,” she explained recently. “It provided opportunities I could have never imagined. I just loved playing. So, to be considered among such talented athletes is hard for me to grasp. I am grateful for the honor.”

Among the criteria for a student athlete to be considered for the Hall of Fame, they had to have participated in an intercollegiate sport at Stockton for at least two years, they must be a graduate of Stockton, their athletic achievements must be verifiable with the Sports Information Office and they must be at least five years removed from his or her last competition, among other criteria.

Former coaches must have been an intercollegiate coach at Stockton for at least five years and must be at least two years removed from his or her last season, among other things. The nominees had to be good citizens to the community and university as well.

Tom Grites retired as an assistant provost at Stockton in 2020, just shy of 43 years, but returned to teach and is a temporary part-time academic advisor in the Center for Academic Advising. Grites was on that inaugural Hall of Fame committee and remains a member of the committee.

“It's always easy to feel extremely satisfied with something that you helped start when it results in a success,” Grites said. “Initially, the only inductees I knew personally were G. Larry James and Sue Newcomb. As we progressed, I actually began to know quite a number of the student-athletes, saw them play, had them in my class, and/or advised them on varied academic issues, plans, policies. I also got to know most of the coaches well enough that they had every confidence in referring their players to me for advice. Both of these aspects have also given me extreme satisfaction and pride. 

“Some did much more work than others, namely Jon Heck, who created the by-laws for the rest of us to review, and Chris Rollman, who knew much of the history of athletics and the athletes at Stockton and upon whom we relied for much of our historical information.”

Grites said he was recommended for membership on the initial committee since he had been the unofficial academic advisor for student-athletes since approximately 2000. It was a task he assumed on his own, he said, mostly because he had attended soccer games and assisted two players on the national championship team in completing their degrees. 

“This experience evolved into attending competitions in almost every sport and subsequently advising students participating in them as needed,” Grites said. “So, this was a somewhat natural opportunity for athletics to reach out to Stockton's academic sector, which I think provided credibility and legitimacy for that population.”

Heck said selecting that inaugural class was more of an art than a science.

“We definitely tried to look at any individual national champions we may have had or if it was multiple national champions like in track,” he said. “People who were first team All-Americans. We also took input from the individual coaches. What’s hard is when we’re looking at players from the 1980s or early to mid-90s, it’s very hard to compare them because Stockton’s teams weren’t as good, the players didn’t get as much recognition. You can take soccer for example. In the 1990s, there was probably an offensive player of the year. In the late 2000s, there’s a goalie of the year, a midfielder of the year, a defender of the year. 

“You can’t really compare. It’s hard to compare apples to apples when there are two different years. If a coach felt there was someone from his or her class that was truly somebody that came to Stockton that could’ve been a NCAA Division I player or they were a career record holder for Stockton, those were probably the initial criteria we looked at. Either individual national championships, All-Americans or somebody who really the people on the committee felt they were head and shoulders above everybody else that was playing at their time.”

The first Stockton team inducted was in 2011 when the 2001 Stockton men’s soccer team, which won Stockton’s only team national championship, earned a Hall of Fame nod. That class also included individual inductees Jeff Moore and Greg Ruttler, who were All-Americans and key players on that national title team. (Ruttler is currently Stockton’s men’s soccer coach. )

“Our first team was our team that won the national championship,” Heck said. “The next teams were teams that got to the Final Four or got to the national championship game and didn’t win. Each year, at the most, you can only put in one team at a time or it becomes unmanageable. When you have like the soccer team, you’ve got 30 guys coming in, plus four individuals. 

“Part of the fun of a Hall of Fame is everybody gets into those conversations, ‘well our team should be in.’ Some teams may feel a little slighted that someone went in before them, but I think that’s all a part of having a Hall of Fame.

“There’s some teams, they may not have won a national championship but were very successful and may feel they laid the groundwork for future teams to be successful, too, which is true. But, ultimately, the committee votes and eight different people are putting their opinion in and that’s how it comes out…Ultimately, I say forget the order, we’re eventually going to get everybody in who’s supposed to be in.”

Now they’re ready to get back to the business of selecting the next group of honorees. 

“We skipped a couple of years because of what was going on with COVID,” Heck added. “…I think it’s been very rewarding. I know the inductees love it. We get the feeling from them that they’re honored, appreciative. 

“I’m kind of the chair of it and take the lead for putting that night together. That’s one of my favorite nights. When the class is inducted, the dinner’s done, I’m leaving and going home, that’s one of my favorite times. It’s stressful to do it, but when it’s done, it really feels like you’ve shown some people some appreciation and athletics has kind of said ‘thank you’ so it’s a good feeling.”

The COVID-19 pandemic put the annual selections on hold, but another induction is planned for October 2022.