Two former National Football League players, an all-time home run champion in South Dakota amateur baseball history, and a local legend headline a group of 15 new inductees into the South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame. Some of the inductees include Doug Eggers, who graduated from Wagner High School and had an outstanding football career at South Dakota State University. He then went on to spend five years with the Baltimore Colts, Darwin Robinson, a Redfield record setting football player and track & field athlete at Dakota State College. He then became a member of the Washington Redskins. Kevin Leighton, a Madison resident who hit more than 500 home runs in his long amateur baseball career, winning numerous state titles along the way, Jim Miner, a Yankton legend who helped build Yankton High School into a football and track & field powerhouse and was known as a tireless recruiter who got many girls and boys involved in a variety of extra-curricular activities. Other inductees in the Class of 2021 include Sioux Falls residents Bruce Conley, Ronald Mitchell and Gary Reed; Duane Whalen and John Houska of Rapid City; Ken Ruml of Howard; Heather Sieler Goehner of Huron; Laverne Diede of Freeman; Randy Fletcher of Lennox; former Aberdeen standout Wally Johnson; and Steve Withorne (deceased). The banquet will be Sunday, September 26, 2021, at the Sioux Falls Convention Center. Tickets for the public event will be available beginning Monday, August 16. Further information will be sent out at that time. With the 15 additions, the hall will have enshrined 321 women and men from every sport and corner of the state. The South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame was established in 1968 by the South Dakota Sportswriters Association. It is now managed by a group of volunteers from across South Dakota. There is a display honoring past Hall of Fame members and this year’s inductees inside the Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls. The entire list of people enshrined can be found at the website www.sdshof.com.
