2022 Springfield Area Sports Hall of Fame Class announced

Native Springfieldian Dan Cashel is a graduate of Saint Agnes High School and 1974 graduate of Benedictine College. His professional career was fashioned at Drury University from 1974 until his retirement in 2020. His long stint at Drury included a myriad of assignments with his longest post as Sports Information Director and Assistant Director of Athletics from 1977 to 2005. After two years in the Drury Admissions Office, he moved to athletics just as Panthers’ men’s basketball was reaching national prominence. Drury was the nation’s top-ranked NAIA team in 1978 and captured the NAIA national championship in 1979.  From 1979 to 1985, Cashel was men’s tennis coach, taking the Panthers to a 102-68 record with seven District 16 runner-up finishes. As Drury moved into the NCAA in 1991-92, Cashel added duties of compliance coordinator and was interim director of athletics during times when the department was in transition. His work as SID earned Drury more than 20 publications design national awards from CoSIDA, including several basketball yearbooks voted best in the nation in the NAIA. He worked closely with media outlets as Drury launched its women’s basketball program in 2000-01. His SID years saw the department grow from six sports in 1977 to 28 at his retirement. The biggest of the many special events he oversaw was coordinating the highly-successful Drury Sports Hall of Fame. He also supervised Drury’s All-Sports Award and was tournament coordinator for many NCAA and other post-season events Drury hosted in several sports. He had many basketball game management duties. In his last years at Drury, Cashel was Director of Campus Recreation and Student-Athlete Enhancement and managed the Barber Fitness Center.

Born in California, Jim Winn and his family moved to Missouri in 1976.
Jim attended Clever High School and became a member of the Republic American Legion baseball team in the summer of 1978, a team that would go on to win the state title that summer. Jim Winn’s baseball career would continue in college at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. In his three seasons, Winn would capture 27 wins and only 9 losses. In 1981, he went an impressive 10-2 and led his team to the NAIA World Series. He was then selected as a 1st team All-American that same year and was selected as the 14^th overall pick in the first round of the 1981 draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he remains the highest drafted baseball player in John Brown history. On April 10th, 1983, at age 23, Winn debuted for the Pirates, and stayed with the team until 1986. He fired two shutout innings and recorded a strikeout in his debut. He would spend his last seasons with the White Sox and Twins, before Tommy John surgery ended his career. He pitched in his last Major League game on September 6^th, 1988, against the Seattle Mariners and finished his career with a 12-17 record and 159 strikeouts. In May of 2014, he was honored by the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame as a member of the first Diamond 9 at the Hall’s Baseball Enthusiasts luncheon. That was the same event that our organization’s founder Bonus Frost was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.

Darrell “Smitty” Smith opened the Smitty’s Mid-West Boxing Gym & Youth Center in 2012 in Springfield, and he has coached more than 1,500 kids in the sport of boxing. For the last decade, the facility has operated as a USA amateur boxing gym while also focusing on getting disadvantaged youth involved in a structured boxing program. Smitty’s Mid-West Boxing Gym has had four boxers selected for the US Olympic Trials, and he was named the Kansas City Golden Gloves Outstanding Coach of the Year in 2017. Smitty’s Boxing Gym has also assisted kids outside the ring in helping many complete their high school or GED program, enlist in the military, enter vocational training, or prepare for college. The success of his facility resulted in Smitty being named the Man of the Year by the Springfield Business Journal in 2021. An accomplished fighter in his own right, Smitty amassed a career amateur record of 218-14 and won more than 30 regional Golden Glove championships. He was named the Outstanding Fighter of Kansas City Golden Gloves in 1982 and was the youngest member of the US National Team that same year. Smitty was the North Carolina Regional Golden Gloves Champ in 1987 and was inducted into the Fort Bragg Boxing Hall of Fame in North Carolina in 2018. He was named the Springfield Fighter of the Year five times and currently serves as a coach and official for USA Boxing. A military veteran, Smitty served 10 years in the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army and retired as a Disabled Veteran after serving in the Gulf War. He has degrees from Drury University in Basic Law Enforcement and Belltown University in Washington in Criminal Justice.

Jack Jewsbury is arguably the most famous and revered male soccer player ever produced in the Ozarks, from youth soccer excellence to outstanding careers at Kickapoo High School and Saint Louis University before embarking on a Major League Soccer professional career. Jewsbury scored a state record 59 goals his senior season (1998) at Kickapoo, with a four-year total of 124 goals. He went on to star five seasons at soccer tradition-rich SLU in St. Louis, where his 101 career points on 38 goals and 25 assists placed him 10th on the Billikens’ all-time scoring list. At SLU, he was a two-time All-America and Academic All-America, was twice named first team All-Conference USA, and was league Player of the Year as a sophomore in 2000. His play helped SLU to four straight NCAA tourney appearances, with the Bills reaching the quarterfinal round in 2001. He was a member of the Billiken All-Half Century team. Jewsbury was selected 43rd in the 2003 MLS SuperDraft by the Kansas City Wizards, where he spent eight seasons with 14 goals in 195 league matches primarily as a midfielder. He was traded to the expansion Portland Timbers in 2011 and was selected for the MLS All-Star Game. Jewsbury played six seasons with Portland before retiring in 2016 when he ranked ninth in MLS history for games played and is one of just three players in league history to play 150 or more games with two different clubs. He had 26 appearances on Portland’s MLS Cup champions in 2015. He moved to the Portland club’s front office as director of business development to lead in developing new corporate partnerships for the club.

The list of Olympic athletes who have called the Ozarks home is a short one. But one of the handful of names you will find on it is that of Courtney Frerichs. Courtney is now a professional distance runner originally from Nixa, MO.  She was introduced to track at an early age but would not find her love of distance running until high school. She graduated summa cum laude from UMKC in 2015 with a BA in Chemistry.  During her time as a Roo, she was an eleven time Summit League conference champion, a five time All-American, and set seven school records that she still holds to this day.  She competed for the University of New Mexico during her fifth year of NCAA eligibility where she led the Lobos to an NCAA Championship title in cross country and won the NCAA title in the 3000 meter steeplechase, setting the current NCAA record in the process. Upon completing her NCAA eligibility, she signed a professional contract with Nike and joined the Bowerman Track Club.  She has competed professionally for the last five years where she has made two Olympic teams (2016, 2020), three World Championship teams, and won a silver medal at the 2017 World Championships.  She most recently raced to a silver medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in the 3000 meter steeplechase and shortly after reset her American Record in the event, becoming the first American woman to break the 9:00 barrier. She currently lives in Beaverton, OR with her husband Griffin Humphreys and their cat Roo. Today she continues to train full-time while also pursuing a MS in Nutrition at Auburn University.

Native Springfieldian Dr. Brian Mahaffey bleeds Kickapoo High School brown and yellow, Missouri State University maroon and white and now St. Louis Cardinals red and he has excelled at all those levels to join the 2022 induction class of the Springfield Area Sports Hall of Fame. A slugging catcher-infielder in his playing days, Mahaffey led Kickapoo to league and district titles and two American Legion state runner-up finishes in his years with the Chiefs. A four-year starter for Coach Keith Guttin at Missouri State from 1985 to 1988, Mahaffey was a three-time Mid-Continent Conference all-league first team selection, three-time academic All-America and co-AMCU Player of the Year as a senior. He played on four straight MSU AMCU league championship clubs and was a key as the Bears made their first-ever NCAA Division I tourney appearance in 1987 in Tempe, Arizona. Mahaffey posted a .349 career batting mark for the Bears with 175 runs batted in over 174 games and he swatted 42 home runs. Inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2018, he graduated in 1993 from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine and got his first experiences with sports medicine. He joined the Mercy Family Medicine Department as a resident in 1998. He then spent 16 years as a team physician for Missouri State athletics and joined the St. Louis Cardinals organization in 2013 through Mercy Health Systems as one of the Cardinals team physicians. In that role, he works with the organization’s physicians, athletic trainers, strength coaches and physical therapists from the big club down through the Cardinals’ minor league system.