PHOTOS: Enfield Athletic Hall of Fame 20th Induction Ceremony

A state runnerup team, four outstanding athletes, a championship coach and a longtime official were honored Saturday at the 20th annual Enfield Athletic Hall of Fame induction dinner.

A number of previous honorees attended the dinner to congratulate the new class at the Oak Ridge Country Club in Feeding Hills, Mass.

Diane DeRose was presented the George Daly Jr. Special Recognition Award, named in memory of an original member of the Hall of Fame committee. DeRose has officiated high school and college field hockey for more than 30 years, is a dedicated volunteer for charitable causes in the Enfield area, and was inducted into the Connecticut Field Hockey Hall of Fame as an umpire in 2014.

Four members of the 1975 Fermi High School softball team, which was Class L runnerup, accepted the team induction honor on behalf of their teammates. Gayle Hutchinson, a 2013 inductee as an individual, spoke on behalf of the team, while Lynne Delay Galanos, Diane Teske O’Brien and Sheryl Wild were also on hand.

The individual inductees were:

• Amber Johnston, who was a three-time All-American swimmer at Fermi High School in the late 1990s, and ranked as high as 24th in the nation. She was also an Academic All-American at Fermi, and later at UConn.
• Steve Levinthal (inducted posthumously), a longtime Enfield resident who won 12 state championships as a cross country and softball coach at Stafford High School.
• Sue Pelligrinelli, a field hockey standout at Enfield High School and Westfield State University who became a highly-successful high school coach in western Massachusetts.
• Karen Scavotto, who at 18 years old was the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic archery team at the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.
• Dave Whinnem, an All-CCC East swimmer at Enfield High School who earned eight All-Penn-Ohio Conference honors at Ashland University.

Photo credits: Julie Cotnoir