VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — In just two days, the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame will hold its induction. It’s an induction three years in the making.
In 2019, the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame announced the class of 2020, including WAVY’s own sports director (now retired) Bruce Rader. Then, the pandemic hit.
“In 2020, we were six weeks shy of the induction when the pandemic began. So, the class of 2020 has yet to be inducted. As we got through the process, even further along, we decided, well, we still want to close the gap on voting. We didn’t want to go three full years without voting. So, what we did was we added a modified class for 2022. And not to take anything away from those inductees, but [we] did just one person per our induction categories. So, we have seven people in the class of 2020. Four people in the class of 2022. Plus, a Distinguished Virginian, which is sports and philanthropy. So, it’s just a really exciting weekend celebrating sports here throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia,” said Will Driscoll, executive director of the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.