New CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Hall of Famer Ron Agostini (2nd from left) stands with his brother, Jim, a longtime girls basketball coach at East Union (Manteca). In photo at right is Bob Amerman and new CIFSJS Hall of Famer Mark Miller (both of Linden). Photos: Mark Tennis.
The CIF Sac-Joaquin Section inducted nine individuals on Sunday night at the Kimpton Sawyer Hotel in Sacramento to maintain a tradition of doing a ceremony every other year that began in 2010. Athletes going in were former NFL receiver Austin Collie, former Ms. Basketball State Player of the Year Jacki Gemelos and former Ms. Softball Player of the Year Anjelica Selden. Go inside to see the names of all of the inductees, how the WNBA Finals had an impact on the night and why the World Series was on the mind of one of the coaching inductees.
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Every CIF section should have a Hall of Fame to celebrate its past and the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section has had one since 2010. A large initial class of more than 50 took care of the most obvious inductees among former players, coaches and others. We were humbled to be in that group in the media category as a combination for the work done by myself and my uncle, the late Nelson Tennis, for nearly 40 years at the time. We also both went to high schools within the SJS.
Those going into the SJS Hall of Fame in more recent years have been part of much smaller classes. The Class of 2024, for example, consisted of three athletes, three coaches, one administrator, one official and one member of the media. Their inductions were held on Sunday night at the Kimpton Sawyer Hotel in Sacramento. All of those individuals either attended the ceremony or had a member of their family represent them. Only one of the nine is deceased.
The only one of three athletes who were there was former Vanden High (Fairfield) softball pitching legend Anjelica Selden. She was our 2004 Ms. Softball Player of the Year for her many record-breaking achievements, including throwing 10 no-hitters in a row. We recall going to one of those no-hitters at Antelope High (it could have been at Center of Antelope) when she pitched the eighth straight of those no-hitters to break the state record at the time of seven. Selden also had 93 career wins, a total of 1,552 career strikeouts and a career ERA of 0.06 that all rank high to this day on all-time state lists.
Selden went to UCLA after high school and had a great career for the Bruins. She had a 110-37 career record there with a 1.35 ERA and is still their career strikeout leader.
“When you’re playing, you never think about things like this, but I started to when I got into my thirties,” Selden said while visiting with family after the ceremonies concluded. “I never thought something like this could happen. I’m very honored, humble and proud. I’m grateful to have been selected since someone had to do some work to find my information.”
Former Vanden High softball pitching phenom Anjelica Selden poses with her mom and her son after being inducted into the Sac-Joaquin Section Hall of Fame.
During the video presentation of her induction, Selden also had great advice for any athlete in any sport still in high school: “No one or no one thing should ever stop you from doing everything that you want to to do.”
Former Ms. Basketball State Player of the Year Jacki Gemelos (2006) from St. Mary’s of Stockton had been planning to be at the ceremony for many months, but last Friday she had to cancel since she works for an agency and there was going to be a Game 5 for the WNBA Championship also held at the same time on Sunday as the banquet. If the New York Liberty had not lost in Game 4 to the Minnesota Lynx and therefore had clinched the WNBA title earlier, then the series would have been over and Jacki would have been in Sacramento. Her mother accepted her gold jacket and collected her other memorabilia.
Gemelos deserves to be celebrated as much as any athlete we’ve ever covered in our years, not so much for her on-the-court accomplishments (including 3,168 career points and a 37.9 ppg average as a senior) but for how she kept coming back from numerous knee injuries. She did get to play in the WNBA and for the Greek National Team. How dynamic was she in high school? Still probably the best NorCal player we’ve ever seen (before the first knee injury), even better at the same age as Sabrina Ionescu of Orinda Miramonte, who hit a game-winning 47-foot three-pointer for the Liberty to win Game 3 of those WNBA Finals.
The other athlete inducted on Sunday was former NFL receiver Austin Collie from Oak Ridge of El Dorado Hills. He wasn’t able to make it but his parents were there and so was Chris Jones, the Oak Ridge coach at the time. Collie had 60 receptions for 978 yards and 18 TDs as a senior. He was all-state, all-decade by the Sacramento Bee for 2000 to 2009 and then went to BYU where he still holds the school records there for career receiving yards and receiving TDs. Collie then went to the NFL where he played five seasons and caught 23 TD passes. Most of his NFL receptions for the Indianapolis Colts and were on passes thrown by all-time great Peyton Manning. He also played for the New England Patriots with all-time great Tom Brady.
The World Series also was on the mind of one of the coaching inductees for the evening, longtime Linden High football and softball head coach Mark Miller. He was lucky enough to be able to have coached someone like Aaron Judge during his career and Judge will be in his first World Series for the New York Yankees beginning Friday in Los Angeles against the Dodgers. Miller loves to tell the story of how Aaron would sometimes eat lunch in the coaches’ room at Linden and how he was fretting at the time about playing football or baseball in college. If anyone has ever watched Judge play baseball, you know he easily could have been an NFL tight end if he had continued to play football.
“We told him his body would thank him for playing baseball when he got up in the morning when he was 65,” recalled Miller, who also has coached a Super Bowl player, Brian Peets, of the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XVI. “I guess he made the right call.”
Miller was joined at the event by former Linden baseball coach Bob Amerman, who also was a coach at the school for more than 40 years and also coached Judge. We once took their picture after Linden won an SJS baseball title in 2005 and ended 26-0. Miller’s girls were 29-0-1 in the same season, which is still the first and only time in state history that a school has gone unbeaten in both baseball and softball at the same time. We had to take their picture again. Miller was a coach at Linden at the varsity and JV levels for 52 years and still goes to every football game where he does the stats on the sidelines.
New SJS Hall of Famer Terry Rasmussen and younger brother Randy were both once standout athletes at La Sierra (Carmichael).
One of the other former head coaches to be inducted was Jack Thomson, who was the head baseball coach at Manteca High from 1981 to 1995 and then went to the new school, Sierra of Manteca, when it opened in the 1995-96 school year. Thomson didn’t retire at Sierra until 2018 and ended with 607 career wins, which is on the all-time state list and is still No. 2 in SJS history. He was a CIF State Model Coach in 2016 and the baseball field at Sierra is named for him.
We sat at a table next to the family of the late Rad McCord, who was a longtime successful coach at Placer High in Auburn in both tennis and skiing. Rad’s boys teams at Placer won seven section titles from 1991 to 2002, his girls won a section title in 1998 and the ski teams that he coached won 11 state titles (which is a skiing competition among all schools that have ski teams in Northern California and Northern Nevada). Rad was 74 in April of 2023 when he died 12 days after he suffered cardiac arrest and fell while riding his bike.
The other three inductees were in the administrator, officials and media category and they were Steve Winter, Terry Rasmussen and Ron Agostini.
Winter was one of three on the night with Manteca connections who were inducted along with Thomson and Agostini (who is a grad of East Union). Winter was in admin at Manteca High for many years, including principal for many years. He also became involved with SJS committees in many roles. Since 1993, Steve has been the director of the SJS boys and girls golf tournaments and still does that work today after retiring from education.
We especially wanted to talk to Rasmussen after the ceremony. He and his brother Randy were both outstanding athletes at La Sierra of Carmichael in late 1960s and early 1970s and their father, Cal, was the vice principal at the school for many years, including the years from 1973 to 1977 when yours truly went there. It turns out that Randy was the sports editor of the Branding Iron school newspaper about five years before myself. None of the Rasmussens knew about the famous baseball game at La Sierra that was held just about a month before the school closed in 1982 in which the Longhorns hit three grand slams in one inning for a national record that still exists to this day. Terry went into the SJS Hall of Fame for serving as a basketball official from 1981 to 2008 and worked in two CIF state finals. He also still serves as an observer at all CIF postseason basketball tournaments.
The Class of 2024 is shown (front row) with the daughter of the late Rad McCord, the mother of Austin Collie and the mother of Jacki Gemelos. Photo: CIF Sac-Joaquin Section.
Ron has become a good friend over the years, and always covered high school sports during his many years as a columnist and writer for the Modesto Bee from 1977 to 2017. He might write about the 49ers one day (he’s been to four Super Bowls) and a Grace Davis High volleyball player the next day. We sat next to each other at the Oakland Coliseum during one of the biggest upsets in CIF boys basketball state history in 1995 when St. Francis of Mountain View upset Dominguez of Compton. He was there to see one of the Modesto area teams play, but we will always remember that game. Ron still works Friday night going to games for the Front Row Preps web site and was at the same game we went to on the Friday before the induction ceremony, a game in Turlock between the host Bulldogs and Downey of Modesto.
Agostini, who was joined at the ceremony by his brother, Jim, who has been the head coach for girls basketball for 17 years at East Union and has been coaching girls hoops for 22 years, also was the one asked to speak on behalf of all of the inductees.
“All of us have had the passion to succeed, but we all had someone behind us to make our success attainable,” he said at the beginning of his remarks. “All of the greatest players in sports started out at home supported by parents and friends.”
Ron then spent the rest of his time saluting all of his fellow inductees with carefully prepared notes. Just like it should always be for any of us who cover high school sports: It’s always about the student-athletes and the coaches first and foremost, and hardly ever about ourselves.
Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports
