While leading the Brookdale Community College’s women’s softball team to three national championships, head coach Thomas ‘Bo’ Scannapieco has gained a number of national honors.
Now, he has earned recognition from Brookdale. The veteran head coach tops the college’s 2016 Athletics Hall of Fame induction class.
For only the third time in the last 36 years, a select group of former Brookdale Community College athletes and coaches will be inducted into the college’s Athletics Hall of Fame.
The 2016 class includes, in addition to Scannapieco, seven former Jersey Blues players, former athletic director John “Jack” Ryan and the 1986 men’s baseball team.
The hall of fame, which recognizes outstanding former players, coaches, administrators and contributors, welcomed its first class in 1979. After more than three decades of athletic success at Brookdale, the hall “reopened” to welcome its second class of inductees in 2015. Honorees are nominated by their peers and members of the community.
This year’s class features multiple all-American athletes and nationally recognized figures, including five baseball players who were drafted or signed by major league teams. The 1986 baseball team won the mid-east district championship en route to a third-place finish at the NJCAA Division I Baseball World Series.
Scannapieco, who is a 1973 Brookdale graduate, is already a member of the National Junior College Softball Hall of Fame and the Jersey Shore Sports Hall of Fame. He has led the Jersey Blues to those three national titles (2002, 2005, 2010) as well as four second-place finishes and 18 regional championships. He’s closing in on 1,000 career wins — a mark he will reach sometime this spring.
Other 2016 honorees include former softball player and two-time all-American Marissa Sottile (Busch), who pitched five no-hitters and one perfect game between 2001 and 2003, and Lori Kirschbaum (McDermott), who starred on the Jersey Blues’ women’s basketball and soccer teams between 1999 and 2001.
The inductees will officially join the hall during a recognition ceremony at 6 p.m. Feb. 12 at the Sheraton Hotel in Eatontown. For more information visit www.brookdaleathletics.com.