Wanted: Your input on hometown sports heroes

Our memory isn’t what it should be.

Athletic directors and former coaches remember only so many names.

And some former players and coaches who could have helped us have passed on.

We realize this will not be easy.

Some of us have already developed close relationships with microfilm machines. It’s becoming a concern in the workplace.

But we’re all after the same information.

We want to find the 10 best athletes at each school.

Some of the big names are easy to rattle off. Besides being the starting quarterback, Hanover’s Mark Phillips was drafted out of high school to play baseball in the San Diego Padres organization.

But what about standout athletes who didn’t play big-name team sports?

Who remembers the William Penn swimming teams? The really good ones from the Don Houseal-coached era when the Bearcats won 24 of 25 District 3 titles.

Sad to say, but most of us here in the office learned about them this week.

So we’re asking for your help.

We want to hear about football, basketball and baseball players — but we also want to hear about golfers and swimmers and field hockey players.

We aren’t limiting the list to one-sport standouts, and we’re giving more consideration to athletes who excelled at more than one sport.

But our criteria are limited to athletes’ achievements at the high school level. While it might help an athlete’s cause to know that he or she earned a Division I scholarship or later became an All-American in college, it won’t be the lone determining factor on whether or not they make a school’s top-10 list.

So we need you to go to the attic and dust off those old yearbooks.

We need your opinions.

Send me an e-mail at jseip@ydr.com (using "Hometown Heroes" in the subject line) or, if you'd prefer old-fashioned mail, write to us at Sports Department, York Daily Record/Sunday News, 122 S. George St., P.O. Box 15122, York 17405-7122.