Lancaster -Lebanon League

HALL OF FAME

 Class of 2022

Friday, February 18, 2022

 Patti Hower

The tale of this girls basketball coaching tape is a most impressive one: 42 years, 756 wins, 20 District Three and three PIAA championships.

And for Patti Hower, there could have been a bit more.

But when the Diocese of Harrisburg shuttered Lebanon Catholic after a 161-year run in April 2020, the door closed on a shining career.

Those 20 district titles are a record, by the way, and to accompany them there were six section championships, three L-L title game appearances and the 1981 league crown.

“Every year, every practice, every game I’ve given it my best, and I feel good about that,” Hower told LNP after Lebanon Catholic’s closure in 2020. “I’ve been at this for 42 years because I’ve always loved to do it, and I’ve always loved my players.”

One of her more memorable success stories grew out of her 2013-14 team, which had all of six players on the roster. From that often rocky beginning eventually grew a team that won four District Three Class 1A championships, and capped its march at the summit — the Beavers won a Class 1A state title at the close of the 2016-17 season, joining Hower’s PIAA winners of 1991-92 and 1994-95.

On Hower’s watch, Lebanon Catholic also produced 16 1,000-point scorers (including her own daughter, Becky, who became the program’s all-time scoring leader with a career total of 2,445 points).

There have been plenty of awards in Hower’s storied career as well, including the American Business Women’s Association’s 1992 Outstanding Business Woman of the Lebanon Valley (educator), the Pennsylvania Scholastic Girls Coaching Association’s 1995 Coach of the Year award, and the 2015 L-L League Coach of the Year honors.

She was a 2012 Rotary Foundation Paul Harris Fellow and a Golden Apple Award Teacher of the Year nominee the same year, and she’s also been inducted to the Lebanon Catholic Athletics Hall of Fame (2017), LebanonCounty Commission for Women Women’s Hall of Fame (2015), Central Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame (2013), and Pennsylvania Sports State Hall of Fame (2011).

R. Thomas Knorr

Teacher. Coach. Trainer. Athletic Director.

The list of Tom Knorr’s duties in the Donegal and Elizabethtown school districts has been varied over the years, and certainly never dull.

Impacting the lives of countless students can be relied upon to keep things interesting.

Himself a Donegal graduate, Knorr went on to get degrees from West Chester and Philadelphia University before coming home to settle into his life’s work — which has been helping others find theirs. Knorr developed the Intro to Sports Medicine curriculum at Donegal and Elizabethtown, and over the years a number of his students have gone on to become athletic trainers, physical therapists, nurses, physicians and surgeons.

Along the way Knorr coordinated high school student trainer workshops each summer and himself served as a trainer for Big 33 and PIAA events.

And then there’s Knorr’s technological edge.

He was the man the L-L turned to to set up the league’s list server so ADs could electronically communicate open dates, postponements and schedule changes, and also ushered in the league’s use of electronic database Schedule Star.

Knorr, who after his retirement from Elizabethtown returned to Philadelphia University as an adjunct professor in instructional design and technology, also focused on wrestling in his career, serving as tournament director at the sectional, district and regional levels.

George Derbyshire

A fixture on Adele Avenue and its surrounding territory in Manheim, George Derbyshire is, and always will be, “Derb.”

Because, as he said in 2017, when he celebrated 50 years in the Manheim Central School District: “I’m totally into it, year-round.”

In his 55-year career with the Barons — he began in 1967 — he’s been a teacher, coach (with stints in wrestling, cross country and football), and trainer. He’s been the district’s equipment manager since 1980 and its athletic director since 1986.

A graduate of Maryville College in Tennessee and West Chester University, Derbyshire, a Ridley Park native, went on to compete in football, basketball and baseball during his high school days at West Nottingham Academy in Rising Sun, Maryland.

After landing in Manheim, though, he turned his attention to wrestling, a line of interest that extended to his work as host and coordinator of the Manheim Lions Holiday Wrestling Tournament from 1978-2017. He was also honored at Wrestling USA magazine’s Pennsylvania State Man of the Year in 1996.

“Back when I first came here,” Derbyshire told LNP in 2017, “it was pretty much wrestling. Wrestling dominated. That was the main sport here.”

The definition of athletic success at the school has rather expanded over the years, including a heaping helping of championship football.

But beyond the “Manheim Magic” of the gridiron, Derbyshire, who was inducted to the Manheim Central Hall of Fame in 2005, has overseen the addition of several sports to the Barons’ portfolio of success at the varsity level. Those include boys and girls soccer, boys and girls volleyball and swimming. The district has also ushered in junior high track and cross country on his watch.

What’s kept him coming back all these years?

That’s an easy one.

"It's the kids that make me want to do what I do," Derbyshire, who also served as the L-L’s boys volleyball chairman from 2019-21, said at the time of his 50th anniversary celebration. "Could I have worked with adults and machinery for 50 years? Probably not."

Thomas (Terry) Engleman

When Terry Engleman began teaching math as a young man at Ephrata High School in 1961, he was still learning himself.

Learning how to be a sports pioneer: Because in short order, he found himself creating a pair of programs for the district. Under Engleman’s guidance, the track and field team was born in 1962. The cross country team came along to join it in 1964.

To be certain, Engleman was no stranger to those sports. A 1961 Bloomsburg graduate, he was a four-year letterman in track. A successful one, too. Undefeated in the two-mile run, he racked up four PSAC championships and a pair of one-mile run titles. He also clocked a 14:25.6 for a winning effort in the three-mile run at the 1960 Penn Relays.

It was only natural, then, that he should share the benefit of his championship experience with the next generation of athletes.

Engleman added the title of PIAA track official to his resume in 1970, the same year his track athletes collected Ephrata’s inaugural state gold medal. That was the year that Scott Shelley, Dennis Hollingsworth, Don Busser and Steve Schaufert clocked a state-record time of 3:25.50 to win the three-mile relay in Class B, as Hollingsworth made up a 40-yard deficit in the final leg for the win.

Engleman may have retired from teaching in 1997, but he remains active in the L-L track world. He became the league’s track assigner in 2000, and continues in the position today.

Hall of Fame Committee Members