PORT ANGELES — Peninsula College will induct Mark Amaral, Curt Bagby, Kent Brauninger and the late William Quenette, as well as the 1999-2000 men’s basketball team into its Pirate Athletics Hall of Fame at a ceremony scheduled for June 2.
It will be Peninsula’s third induction event. It will be held at 5 p.m. at the Cedars at Dungeness Golf Course banquet room.
“Our committee came up with a great new class of inductees, representing men’s and women’s sports over a span of 37 years of our athletic history,” said Rick Ross, associate dean for Athletics and Student Life. “I am personally very happy for Mark, Curt, Kent and the family of Coach Quenette. It will also be great to see the players from the 1999-2000 team again. They had quite a run, winning our first ever league championship and posting the most wins ever for a Pirate basketball team. It’s also cool that they’ve mostly stayed in contact for all these years.”
The event will begin with a social time at 5 p.m. with the program starting at 5:30 p.m. Light refreshments and hors d’oeuvres will be served, along with a no-host bar. Inductees are asked to reserve space for themselves and their immediate family members by contacting Ross at rross@pencol.edu. Admission is free for inductees, families, friends and guests as space allows.
Mark Amaral
Peninsula hired Amaral to relaunch men’s basketball in 1997 after the sport was dropped in 1981. Amaral put together a winning record in just his second season (19-9) and then went 28-6 in his third year to win North Region Coach of the Year — and the first league championship in the history of Peninsula College. In his three seasons at Peninsula, he went 58-31, and laid the groundwork for what has been a very successful modern history of Pirate men’s basketball.
After three years at the Pirate helm, Amaral went on to join the staff at UC Santa Barbara, Colorado State, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Pepperdine. Amaral recently accepted a position as head assistant basketball coach for the Xinjiang Flying Tigers of the CBA in China.
Curt Bagby
Peninsula hired Bagby as its first women’s basketball coach when the school relaunched basketball in 1997. Bagby came to Peninsula following an outstanding high school career coaching girls’ basketball and football at Port Angeles High School. He assembled the very first women’s intercollegiate basketball team from the ground up in 1997 and then went on to win 57 games in four years, taking the Pirates to their first two Northwest Athletic Conference Basketball Tournament appearances in school history. He twice won North Region Coach of the Year honors. His notable contribution to Peninsula College was as a women’s basketball “founding father” who not only achieved success himself, but also laid the groundwork for the program’s success that followed.
Kent Brauninger
Kent Brauninger came to Peninsula College in 1968 to teach mathematics. He volunteered to help Athletic Director Art Feiro and the Pirate basketball program as a score clock operator. A math professor by day, he was at the scorer’s table at night, keeping time and score for Pirate basketball games from 1968-1981. He returned to the score clock in 1997 when the College re-launched basketball — and he’s been at the table almost every home game since, running the score clock for more than 500 basketball games. He retired from Peninsula in 2000, but not only stayed on to teach math part time for a few years, but has also remained as a volunteer at the scorer’s table for 18 years and counting.
William “Bill” Quenette
The late Coach Quenette was the first coach in Peninsula College sports history, hired to teach physical education and to form a “club” basketball team in 1962-63, one year after the school was founded. He then coached Peninsula’s first intercollegiate basketball team a year later in 1963-64 and went on to serve four years as the Pirate head coach. He also coached golf, baseball and track during that time, and helped design the current Pirate gym, which was built in 1966, the year he moved back to Moorhead, Minn., where he had started his coaching career at Concordia College in 1957. Quenette, who passed away in 2013, has been inducted into an astounding six halls of fame, including The Minnesota High School Basketball Coaches, Concordia College, Minnesota High School Coaches, Moorhead Hall of Honor, West Fargo High School and now Peninsula College.
1999-2000 Men’s Basketball Team
The 2000 Pirate men’s basketball team, under Amaral, was the first in Peninsula College history to win a league championship. It also was the first team in Pirate history to earn a No. 1 ranking in the NWAC Coaches’ poll. That team finished the season 28-6 overall, which still stands as the most wins in a season in Pirate men’s basketball history. In addition to Amaral, the team’s coaches included Pat Foley, Brant Borghorst and manager Jason Robinson. Players included Olaf Arvidsson of Ostersund, Sweden; Brian Bell of Puyallup; Brent Bevers of Kissee Mills, Mo.; Mike Bowland of Colville; Leroy Johnson of Tacoma; Kenny Lutz of White Salmon; Ray Munyagi of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; Justin Murray of Tacoma; Masero Nyirabu of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; Eric Smilay of Port Angeles; Jeff Terrill of Vancouver, Wash.,; Steven Towne of Bothell; Aaron Vandenberg of Quilcene; and Barry Willis of Seattle.
Previous inductees
In 2016, the Peninsula College Athletics Hall of Fame inducted the NWAC champion 2010 men’s soccer team, the late Jim Lunt, Rose Gala Moorhead, Howard “Scooter” Chapman, and Jim Clem. In 2014, the year the Pirate HOF was founded, Peninsula inducted the WAC champion 1970 men’s basketball team, Jerry Allen, the late Art Feiro, Kathy Murphy-Carey, and the late Dr. Wally Sigmar.
