PORT ANGELES — The 2010 Peninsula College men’s soccer team, Scooter Chapman, Jim Clem, Jim Lunt and Rosemary Moorhead will be the next inductees into the Peninsula College Athletics Hall of Fame.
The 2010 soccer team and the four individuals, will officially be inducted at the Hall of Fame ceremony, set for June 4.
“This is an outstanding and very deserving group,” Rick Ross, the associate dean for athletics and student life at Peninsula College, said.
“Our committee reviewed a long list of teams and individuals who have made a positive impact on Pirate Athletics and narrowed it down to this group for 2016.
“I’m looking forward to hearing their stories and officially bringing them into our Hall of Fame in June.”
2010 men’s soccer team
The 2010 Peninsula Pirates became the second team in the college’s history to win a championship, but the first to win a Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges title.
The 1970 men’s basketball team won the crown when it was the Washington Athletic Conference. Years later the WAC expanded to include Oregon colleges and the NWAACC, now Northwest Athletic Conference, was formed.
That Pirates went 13-3-4 overall and 8-3-2 in West Division play, claiming the West championship by one point over Bellevue.
The Peninsula men scored only 36 goals, sixth-best in the NWAC that year, and allowed only 18, which was the third-best mark.
The Pirates played Highline to a scoreless tie in the NWAC championship and then earned the trophy by winning a thrilling 5-4 shootout.
Miguel Gonzalez, who now plays professionally for the Colorado Springs Switchbacks in the United Soccer League, led the Pirates in scoring with 15 goals and four assists in 2010.
Andrew Chapman was named NWAC Coach of the Year. He was assisted that year by Kanyon Anderson and Tim Tucker.
“That was such a great night in the history of Peninsula College athletics,” Ross said.
“Coach Chapman and his men opened the door for all the teams that followed to realize what was possible from a small community college tucked away in our corner of the state.
“We’ve won seven other NWAC championships in soccer and basketball since that night.”
Scooter Chapman
Well known across the region as an icon in newspaper and radio, Howard “Scooter” Chapman has reported on Peninsula College athletics since its beginning in the 1962.
Chapman served as sports editor of the Port Angeles Evening News, now Peninsula Daily News, and sports director for Radio KONP throughout most of Peninsula Colleges’ history, including a live radio broadcast of the 1970 men’s basketball championship at Lower Columbia College in Longview.
Now, 46 years later, Chapman, at the age of 81, is still a presence at the scorer’s table at home basketball and soccer games.
In addition to the Peninsula College Athletics Hall of Fame, Chapman also resides in the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 2011 for his contribution to high school sports as a journalist and an official.
While most known for his legendary career in Port Angeles radio and newspaper, Chapman also boasts a successful career officiating sports events on the North Olympic Peninsula, including fastpitch softball games at Peninsula from 2000-2009.
“You can’t talk about sports in our community without talking about Scooter Chapman,” Ross said.
“His contribution to our success here at Peninsula College is immeasurable.
“It’s hard to fathom that he was on the radio reporting about the late Bill Quenette’s Pirate basketball team in 1962, and he’s on the air this morning reporting about Mitch Freeman’s basketball team in 2016.”
Jim Clem
The pitching coach and recruiting coordinator for the Bellingham Bells, a West Coast League baseball team, got his start at Peninsula College in 1971.
Jim Clem played baseball and basketball for two years at Peninsula and also served as student body president.
As a pitcher and outfielder for the Pirates, he was named team captain and Most Valuable Player.
He went on to pitch for Central Washington University, helping the Wildcats win the Evergreen Conference championship in 1975, before graduating and moving onto one of the most impressive coaching careers in the region.
Clem coached two seasons at Dayton High School and then 28 seasons at Burlington-Edison High School, where his teams won 12 conference championships and appeared in 15 state tournaments.
Clem was named National High School Baseball Coaches Association Coach of the Year for Washington State and also had enormous success coaching various levels of American Legion baseball.
Jim Lunt
The late Jim Lunt is among the most important figures in Peninsula College’s sports history.
He was the College’s first student body president, in 1961, the year the school was founded, and the year he and other students selected the school colors and the Pirate as its mascot.
Clem returned to Peninsula in the late 1960s. He was involved in athletics, student life and drama, working alongside the late Art Feiro, who served as the school’s athletic director, in addition to his other roles at Peninsula, from the mid-1960s through 1981.
Peninsula dropped its athletic program in 1981, not long after a storm sank the Hood Canal Bridge.
“He started here as a student leader and he returned as the hardest-working professional I’ve ever known,” Ross said.
“He bled black and gold and was distraught when the college terminated athletics in 1981.
“I remember sitting in his office and talking to him about bringing basketball back in 1995. He said, ‘Only if you can guarantee the college won’t end it again. I couldn’t survive that.”’
Wally Sigmar, Peninsula College’s president at the time, asked Lunt to lead a team of college staff and community boosters to explore resurrecting Pirate athletics in 1996.
Lunt was named athletic director in addition to his role as financial aid director. Peninsula launched men’s and women’s basketball in the fall of 1997, and then added men’s soccer and women’s softball in 2000.
Lunt retired from Peninsula College in 2001 and continued with his “second career,” one that saw him serve more than 25 years as President of the all-volunteer North Olympic Baseball and Softball program.
Rosemary Gala Moorhead
Rose Moorhead played volleyball, basketball, softball and badminton competitively as a student at the University of Arizona, where she was named the Outstanding Sports Woman in 1961.
She then earned her Masters of Science at the University of Washington and shortly after accepted a position to teach physical education and health at Peninsula College in 1965.
Soon after arriving at Peninsula, Moorhead established a Women’s Recreation Association, or WRA, program and worked with Feiro to start women’s volleyball and women’s basketball at Peninsula.
Through the WRA, the Pirates competed strongly against other community colleges in the region, as well as against the University of Victoria and the University of Washington freshmen.
Among the outstanding athletes she coached were Hester Hill, Debbie Crumb, Jan Jacobs, Karen Kettel, Dee Dee Hodges, Jean Hordyk, Peggy Marsh and Meridee Warder.
Moorhead left Peninsula, where she taught as many as 14 different physical education courses, in 1973, but she remained an advocate, and a pioneer, of women’s sports on the North Olympic Peninsula, where she officiated volleyball for many years.
She also helped start the Port Angeles Women’s Tennis Club, and also helped establish the senior games in Port Angeles.
“Rose was a pioneer in the establishment of women’s athletics at Peninsula College,” Ross said.
“She reached out to the WRA to build a program here when intercollegiate programs were not available to women athletes.
“It was her passion for sports, and her work, along with Kathy Murphy-Carey and others who followed, that broke down barriers in pre-Title IX days.
“I believe a piece of the championships we’ve won in women’s soccer and basketball can be traced back to Rose.”
