By Doug Zaleski—
MUNCIE, IN — The Delaware County Athletic Hall of Fame has elected 11 new members who will be honored this month in its 2026 class.
Cindy (Kizer) Baldwin, Melvin Bryant II, Bob Cook, Caroline (Gullion) Kovalcin, Mike Larrabee, Joselyn (Johnson) Martin, Ryan Schrecongost, Craig Skinner, Kristy (Cox) Smoot, Cody Young, and Doug Zaleski will be inducted July 25 at the Ball State Alumni Center. Kaye Harrell will be honored at the banquet as this year’s James Lightbody Award of Excellence recipient.
The induction banquet, sponsored by Crown Pointe Communities, will be at 6 p.m. July 25 at the Ball State Alumni Center. Tickets for the dinner, available through the hall’s website at delcohof.org, are $30 for adults, $15 for children 5-12, and free for children under 5. The event is being underwritten by Larry New, CEO of Crown Pointe Communities, and wife Cheryl.
A golf outing, presented by Pizza King, starts with lunch at 11 a.m. and a shotgun start at noon on July 24. Entry for the four-player scramble event is $240 per team. Hole sign sponsorships are available for $50 and three signs are $100. The lunch is sponsored by Associated Advertising Specialties. Teams can enter up to the day of the event.
The Delaware County Athletic Hall of Fame awarded five major academic scholarships this year. Henry Tokar received the Francis Lafferty Hall of Fame Scholarship for $3,500, Ryan Burkholder (boys) and Zoey Burkholder (girls) received the Larry and Cheryl New Family Scholarship for $2,500 each, Connor Rowray received the Hill Family Scholarship for $2,000, Grace Turner received the Schrecongost Family Scholarship for $2,000, Ashlyn Dudley received the Tom Childs Family scholarship for $2,000, Noah Barnett received the Roberta “Tootie” Falls Memorial Scholarship for $1,000, and Levi Abbott received the Coach DeNeal Family Scholarship for $1,000.
This year’s Hall of Fame honorees are:
Cindy (Kizer) Baldwin
Baldwin was part of a two-time IHSAA championship team in the late 1990s at Central High School. Her Bearcats squad won sectional, regional, semistate and state titles in 1997 and repeated the feat in 1998.
She was named the 1998 most valuable player for the North Central Conference, and she claimed the Mental Attitude Award by the IHSAA the same year.
Baldwin went on to play collegiately at Western Michigan University. She was the team’s rookie of the year in 1999 and helped the Broncos claim the 2000 Mid-American Conference championship.
Melvin Bryant II
Bryant was credited by coach John Hochstetler as one of the pivotal players that helped build a culture of winning at Central High School in the early 2000s.
The Bearcats posted a 7-4 record during his junior season. The win total was the highest for the program in 30 years. Central repeated the 7-win total in his senior year in 2001. Bryant earned first-team All-State recognition as a tight end as a junior and senior.
That helped him earn multiple Division I scholarship offers, and he accepted one from the University of Illinois. Bryant was the starting tight end for the Illini from 2003-05. He also was a starter on Central’s 2001-02 basketball team.
Bob Cook
Cook made his mark in basketball at Wapahani High School and Olivet Nazarene University.
He played all levels of basketball leading up to his prep career at Wapahani. Cook received all-county, all-conference and all-sectional honors while helping the Raiders win multiple conference and sectional championships. His team was ranked 15th in the state in the 1988-89 season, and he also broke the school record for points in a game with 39.
Cook had a successful career at Olivet. He was the conference player of the year twice and a two-time district player of the year. Cook scored 1,400 career points while helping his team win four conference championships, three district titles and advance to the national tournament three times.
Caroline (Gullion) Kovalcin
Kovalcin was one of the premier distance runners in Central High School history, earning notoriety in cross country and track and field while helping the Bearcats win multiple championships in the North Central Conference, sectional and regional competition. The track program was ranked in the top 10 in the state in 1999.
The 1997-98 school year was especially dominant. She won city, North Central Conference, sectional and regional races that season in cross country. During her junior and senior seasons in track, Kovalcin twice won the NCC, sectional and regional championships in the 1,600 and 3,200 meter races. She also was a sectional champion in the 800 run, plus the 4×400 and 4×800 relay events.
Kovalcin was known as a natural leader with a strong work ethic and competitive excellence that also was displayed in the classroom. Now a Chicago resident, she competes in 5Ks, half-marathons and marathons.
Mike Larrabee
Larrabee guided Yorktown to multiple championships while coaching the Tigers in baseball for nine seasons as an assistance and 14 seasons as the head coach.
He took over the helm in 2003 and compiled a 253-150 record. His Tigers won Delaware County tournament championships seven times, six sectional titles, two regional crowns and one Hoosier Heritage Conference pennant.
Larrabee helped develop six Indiana All-Star players, five first-team All-Staters, and 24 players who went on to play college baseball, including 10 at the Division I level. He also was a district coach of the year four times and HHC coach of the year twice. He was a district representative for 12 years. He also spent four years as a basketball assistant, and currently has coached 32 years as an assistant football coach at Yorktown.
Joselyn (Johnson) Martin
Martin’s career in athletics, which includes nine varsity letters in three sports at Central High School, represents varied accomplishments and excellence, the bulk of it coming in volleyball.
The four-year volleyball letterwinner helped the Bearcats post a 142-12 record during her time with the team. Central won state championships in 1999 and 2002 with combined records of 76-4. Martin’s 2001 team was 33-2 and finished runner-up in the state finals. Her Munciana club team won national championships in 1999 and 2002.
On the basketball court, Martin also won four letters while being named All-North Central Conference as a junior and senior. She led the league in field-goal percentage in 2002.
After high school, Martin played collegiately at the University of Tennessee. She helped the Volunteers win the Southeastern Conference regular-season and tournament titles for the first time in 2004. Her 2005 team went to the NCAA Final Four for the first time in school history. She currently officiates high school volleyball in Tennessee and provides private volleyball lessons.
Ryan Schrecongost
Schrecongost is a highly accomplished PGA Professional and golf instructor with more than 30 years of experience in the golf industry. Since becoming a PGA Professional in 2004, he has established himself as one of Indiana’s most respected golf coaches. He has given more than 40,000 lessons throughout his career and mentoring many of the state’s top players while being named “best teacher in Indiana” twice by Golf Digest.
His career has included leadership and instructional roles at several prestigious golf facilities across the country. He worked at Pinehurst Resort in the Golf Advantage School, served at Pebble Brook Golf Club, Wade Hampton Golf Club and Keowee Key Country Club as Director of Instruction, and later became the PGA Head Golf Professional at The Golf Club of Indiana. He has been with GOLFTEC since 2011 and is currently the PGA Director of Instruction and Franchise Owner of GOLFTEC Carmel.
Schrecongrost also received GOLFTEC’S MVP Award as one of the Top 20 Exceptional Instructors in America in 2021 and 2022, along with multiple GOLFTEC National Awards for Outstanding Instruction in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. In addition to coaching, he has contributed to the golf community through published instructional articles for Indiana Golf Magazine and has built a reputation as one of the Midwest’s premier golf instructors, combining decades of experience, competitive success and a passion for helping golfers improve.
Craig Skinner
Skinner’s string of success started in 1989 as an assistant volleyball coach at Burris during the Owls’ run to a state championship. Multiple titles have followed him during his career.
He was an assistant coach at the University of Nebraska in 2000 when the Cornhuskers won the NCAA women’s volleyball championship. Skinner became the head coach of the women’s program at the University of Kentucky in 2004 and has been credited with moving the program into national prominence.
Skinner holds the school record for most wins with a 497-157 record in 21 seasons. His Wildcats became the first Southeastern Conference team to win a national championship in volleyball in 2020. Kentucky finished runner-up in the national title match last season.
Kentucky has played in 21 consecutive NCAA tournaments. Before his arrival, the Wildcats had not qualified for the tournament in 11 years and had not enjoyed a winning season in five years. Twenty-seven of his players have received All-America status.
Kristy (Cox) Smoot
Smoot has a long history of success in volleyball, starting with a Munciana AAU national championship in 2001 and a runner-up finish in the national championship in 2005.
The Delta graduate carried that performance into high school. She helped the Eagles win the 2002 IHSAA state championship. Smoot was All-Hoosier Heritage Conference and All-Delaware County selections in 2003 and 2004. She earned state recognition by being named to the 2004 Indiana All-Star team.
Smoot continued her athletic career at Indiana State University where she broke several records. The libero ended her career as the school’s leader in total digs, digs per set, and aces in a season. She was the team most valuable player in 2006, ‘07 and ‘08. Smoot won the team’s leadership award in 2006.
Cody Young
Young’s athletic career is defined by the determination to overcome a devastating stage 4 cancer diagnosis that was deemed inoperable when he was 9 years old.
He battled hard to reverse the outcome and admirably went on to a career in baseball that included a professional opportunity. The growth started at Delta High School, where he became a two-time all county and all conference player. He was the team most valuable player as a senior after posting the seventh best batting average in school history at .444.
Young was a four-year starter at Anderson University where he became an all conference and All-American. He set the school record for single-season slugging (.982) and was second in batting average (.482) while being selected the Ravens outstanding male athlete of the year in 2010.
He was selected by the Baltimore Orioles in the 2010 draft, and played two seasons with the organization in the minor leagues before retiring. He has since worked in the private sector in Indianapolis.
Doug Zaleski
Zaleski came to Muncie from Wisconsin in 1988 and stepped into a situation as a beat reporter for the Muncie Evening Press and later The Star Press that featured one of the best periods of athletics in Ball State history.
He was fortunate to be in the front row as Ball State basketball played in either the NCAA Tournament or NIT nine times from 1989-2002. Zaleski chronicled the Cardinals’ 1990 NCAA Sweet 16 run and the 2001 Maui Invitational, the two most memorable events in program history. He also covered six of the nine all-time Division I football games in which the Cardinals played.
Away from Ball State assignments, he greatly enjoyed covering high school teams coached by the likes of Bill Harrell, John Robbins, Steve Shondell, Brian Dudley, Tim Cleland and a list of so many others too long to mention.
Zaleski was named the 2010 Indiana Sports Writer of the Year. He also earned more than 80 state, regional and national writing awards. The most prestigious was a fifth place finish in the Associated Press national contest for a series of articles on Ball State basketball. The top four winners were from the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Kaye Harrell
Harrell was selected by the Delaware County Athletic Hall of Fame as the Lightbody Award of Excellence winner for 2026. The honor is bestowed on an individual by the Delaware County Sports Heritage
Foundation. It recognizes the contributions of an individual who has excelled in the participation, support or promotion of athletics with a link to Muncie, Delaware County, Indiana.
The Delta High School graduate excelled in basketball for three seasons and went on to play four years at Ball State, serving as a co-captain each year.
Harrell went on to a long and successful career in coaching and teaching in Delaware County. She began her coaching career in 1975 at Wes-Del, leading the Warriors to county and sectional championships five times. The 1975-76 team won a regional crown. Harrell coached at Muncie Southside one year before moving on to Muncie Central, where she coached the Bearcats two times for six seasons each. They won sectional crowns in 1994 and 1995.
Harrell coached the Indiana All-Stars, and has supported camps and youth leagues for many years. The widow of multiple hall of fame basketball coach Bill Harrell, Kaye is a member of the Delaware County Athletic Hall of Fame and the Wes-Del Athletic Hall of Fame.
