(Sugar Grove, IL.) – An individual and a team will make up the 2022 Class to be inducted into Waubonsee Community College's Athletic Hall of Fame. Ivy Clark, a standout men's basketball player in the late 1970's and the Chiefs' 2011 Women's Soccer team will be formally enshrined at the college's Annual Athletic Banquet and Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Thursday, May 19. The event will begin at 6:30 p.m. (CST) in the school's Academic and Professional Center on the Sugar Grove campus, and will be streamed 'live' via a link at www.GoChiefs.com/HOF. In addition, Waubonsee student-athletes from the 2021-2022 school year will be recognized during the evening.
Clark was two-time All-Conference First Team selection on Waubonsee's back-to-back Skyway Conference Championship teams in 1977 and 1978. He represented the Chiefs at the Illinois Junior College All-Star game, back when all 45 Illinois Community Colleges competed in one division. Clark transferred to Monmouth College, where he twice earned All-Midwest Conference First Team honors and helped propel the Fighting Scots to the conference title his senior year, averaging 18.6 points-per-game and leading the team in rebounding. Clark played professionally for a year in Sweden and went on to serve as a leader, mentor and counselor during a 30-year career working at the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles, engaging with juvenile offenders and at-risk youth as a Corrections Officer. In 2014 he was inducted into the Monmouth College Athletic Hall of Fame.
The 2011 Waubonsee women's soccer team was the first squad from Region IV to ever win a District title and advance to the NJCAA Division I National Tournament in Melbourne, Florida. The Chiefs finished with 17 wins, one shy of the program record, and were ranked seventh nationally in the final NJCAA poll. Waubonsee captured the Region IV crown with three straight dominating shutouts, and then downed Delta (MI) College in the District title match, out shooting their four playoff foes a combined 94-6 along the way. The Chiefs tallied a team record 125 goals and established a program record of 111 assists on the season. Nine different players reached double figures in points on the way to tallying a record 361 team points. The Chiefs' dominating offense registered a program record 644 shots on goal, and had 16 different players score at least one goal while every player booked at least one assist. Waubonsee's defense set a school-record with 15 shutouts and allowed only 120 shots on goal in 25 matches. Overall 10 different Chiefs earned All-Illinois Skyway Collegiate Conference and All-Region accolades, with head coach Leslie (Ferguson) Raney being named the Region IV Women's Soccer Coach of the Year. In the end, the 2011 Chiefs broke nearly every program record that fall, 14 of which still stand today.
