Rider Inducts Five Broncs into Athletics Hall of Fame
 |
| (l - r) President Mordechai Rozanski, Deanna Dovak, Coach Joe Behot, Leo Giel, and Director of Athletics Don Harnum. Not present for the photo were Mario Porter and Jose Lopez. |
Softball slugger Deanna Dovak ’02, football coach Joe Behot (1948-51), track star Jose Lopez ’95, wrestling standout Leo Giel ’99 and professional basketball player Mario Porter ’02 became Rider’s newest Hall of Famers.
The 1996-97 Rider wrestling team, which was ranked seventh in the nation over the final five weeks of the season, received the third Outstanding Team Achievement (OTA) Award. The first two OTA awards went to the undefeated 1940 soccer team and the 1967 baseball team, which finished fifth at the College World Series.
“Once again the Hall of Fame committee did an excellent job of selecting an extremely worthy group of individuals for the class of 2008,” said Rider Director of Athletics Don Harnum.
Deanna Dovak earned All-America honors as a junior when she led the nation with 21 home runs. The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Player of the Year and twice the Rider female Athlete of the Year, Dovak graduated in possession of five Rider career softball records, including a .386 batting average, and six single season Rider records. Her 57 career home runs was sixth highest in the NCAA at the time and is still among the top 15 in the history of Division I softball.
After graduation, she played ASA Women’s Class A Fastpitch softball and earned All-America honors in 2003 as the ASA national home run champion. In 2004, she was again an ASA All-American as both the home run and national batting champion.
In the late 1940s, a great many Rider students used the GI Bill to earn a college education, and a number of these battled-hardened veterans comprised the Rider football program. Joe Behot coached the last three Rider football teams – 1949, ’50 and ’51 – compiling a record of 18-5-1. He led his teams, known then as the Roughriders, to seven straight wins in 1949, a tie with powerhouse Bowling Green in 1950, and a 26-7 victory over East Stroudsburg in Rider’s final football game in 1951.
A scholastic star at Burlington High School and Bordentown Military Academy, Behot was also a two-way standout football player at Villanova, playing halfback and linebacker on the 1939 Villanova powerhouse team that was in line for the Gator Bowl.
As a senior, Behot served as Villanova’s quarterback and, upon graduation, he served four years of wartime duty in the Philippines and Japan, earning an artillery field commission. Upon his return from the war, even having not played football in four years, Behot received numerous NFL tryouts before becoming a semi-pro star for teams like the Redskins’ farm team, the Wilmington Clippers of the American Professional League.
Behot became a coach at Haddonfield High School where he won Group III football championships and defeated the higher-enrollment Group IV champion in a playoff game, before coming to Rider as the backfield coach in 1948.
Jose Lopez became just the second Bronc ever to win an event at the ICAAAA Eastern Championships (400-meter hurdles in 50.36) and Rider’s first NCAA Division I track & field qualifier. The Rider male Athlete of the Year for 1994-95, Lopez competed in the Olympic Sports Festival and at the USA National Track & Field Championships.
During his time at Rider, Lopez captured five Northeast Conference individual gold medals and was a member of six NEC championship teams (indoor and outdoor). He was a member of both the current Rider record-holding outdoor 400-meter relay team and distance medley relay teams, as well as a member of the Rider record-setting indoor mile relay team.
Lopez is Rider’s first and, so far, only NCAA representative at the NCAA National Track & Field Championships. He went to nationals twice, as a junior and a senior.
Leo Giel was the Rider male Athlete of the Year in 1998-99 after placing sixth in the nation at the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships to cap a 34-2 season and a 111-35 career. Giel was 7-7 in three trips to nationals in his career. As a junior, Giel beat two previous national champions, and as a senior, he placed third at the prestigious Midlands Tournament.
At the 1999 NCAA National Championship Tournament at Penn State, Giel defeated wrestlers from the University of Minnesota, the University of North Carolina and Michigan State University before losing 3-2 to the No. 2 seed, 7-3 to the No. 1 seed and 4-2 to the eventual fourth-place wrestler. After graduation, he came back to his alma mater and served four years as an assistant coach on the Rider wrestling staff.
Mario Porter was the MAAC Basketball Player of the Year and an honorable mention All-American in 2001-02, leading the Broncs to a first place finish in the MAAC. The first Rider player to compile both 1,700 points and 700 rebounds, Porter now plays professionally in Finland and was unable to attend the induction ceremony due to his playing schedule.
Porter was one of just 52 players from over 300 teams to earn All-America honors in 2002 and was the only player from a New Jersey college to earn Associated Press All-America honors.
The ’97 wrestling team joins the ’67 baseball team and the ’40 soccer team as a recipient of the Outstanding Team Achievement Award. The team included three All-Americans, was ranked seventh in the nation over the final five weeks of the dual meet season, and placed 25th in the nation at the NCAA Championships.
“All of the individual inductees, as well as the 1997 wrestling team, achieved at a very high level,” Harnum said. “They brought tremendous honor and recognition to their respective sports, to the Athletics Department and to Rider University.”
Submitted on February 29, 2008
