Five LV-area sports figures earn spots in local shrine

Friday, June 11, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.

Jack Cason

BORN: Oklahoma

FAMILY: Wife, Maxine; son, Pat; daughter, Dana.

CLAIM TO FAME: Longtime supporter of UNLV athletics. ... helped to provide summer employment for many UNLV athletes. ... a member of the UNLV Athletics Hall of Fame.

Richie Clyne

BORN: New York

FAMILY: Son, Chris.

CLAIM TO FAME: Brought one of the country's greatest spectator sports to the valley by building the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. ... owns and operates the Auto Collection at the Imperial Palace.

Tony Knap

BORN: Wisconsin

FAMILY: Wife, Doris; daughters, Jackie, Angie and Caroline.

CLAIM TO FAME: Led UNLV's football program into Division I status. ... coached the Rebels to their biggest football victory, an upset of No. 8-ranked BYU in 1981.

Dwaine Knight

BORN: New Mexico

FAMILY: Wife, Debbie; daughter, Keely.

CLAIM TO FAME: Two-time NCAA golf coach of the year. ... led UNLV to the NCAA golf championship. ... member of the GCAA Hall of Fame.

Gerald Riggs

BORN: Las Vegas

FAMILY: Two sons

CLAIM TO FAME: Star running back at Bonanza High, Arizona State, the Atlanta Falcons and Washington Redskins. ... played in the NFL Pro Bowl three times.

One of the stated purposes of the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame is to educate the local community about the exploits of Las Vegas' best athletes and their loyal supporters.

But since it was established in 1997, the local sports shrine, which recently moved into a new home in the Galleria mall at Sunset, also has educated some of the men who founded it.

"To be honest, early on we thought we might run out of inductees, because Las Vegas is such a young community," said Steve Stallworth, director of the Orleans Arena and a former chairman of the hall of fame. "But to this point, we haven't. There are so many deserving people and this group is no exception."

The group to which Stallworth referred -- Dwaine Knight, Gerald Riggs, Richie Clyne, Tony Knap and Jack Cason -- will be feted today at a golf outing at Siena Golf Club, followed tonight by the annual Hall of Fame dinner and gala at Cox Pavilion.

Knight is a two-time NCAA coach of the year who guided UNLV to the 1998 national golf championship; Riggs was a star running back at Bonanza High who went on Arizona State and a Pro Bowl career as an NFL running back; Clyne is the founder of Las Vegas Motor Speedway; Knap spearheaded UNLV's ascension into Division I as its head football coach; and Cason is a longtime booster of UNLV sports.

Their inclusion raises the number of hall of fame inductees to 34 that began with David Humm, the inaugural and sole inductee in 1997.

"When you think about, when Sports Illustrated came out with their list of top 50 athletes from Nevada, we've already inducted about half of those people," Stallworth said.

Stallworth, who served as the hall's chairman the past four years before handing the reins to former Las Vegas Stars baseball player Kevin Higgins, said one of the things he's most proud of is the composition to the board, a mixture of young and older observers of the local sports scene.

It is that mixture, he says, which has assured that deserving nominees don't fall through the cracks during induction discussions.

"You look at Dwaine Knight, he could have been in the first class, and you think about Gerald Riggs and Tony Knap and then Richie Clyne, the vision that went into the building of the Speedway, which has the biggest one-day event impact on our community," Stallworth said.

"But a guy like Jack Cason, I'm not sure he would have registered on many of our radar screens. But we've got guys like Manny Cortez and Rex Bell, people who have been around a long time, on our board. When it comes to kicking things around, they remember."