Olympic champion Thea LaFond will be among the six sports legends inducted into the Montgomery County Sports Hall of Fame on Sunday.
The gold medal-winning triple jumper will join the Hall’s 29 previous honorees in an induction ceremony at the Silver Spring Civic Building. The ceremony will be open to the public and free to attend.
LaFond, a Silver Spring resident and former Montgomery County Public Schools teacher, won the Olympic gold in the women’s triple jump last summer, clinching the medal with her second jump of 15.02 meters.
Despite competing under the Dominica flag, LaFond has deep local ties.
She moved with her family to Silver Spring at the age of seven, graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Wheaton, and went on to the University of Maryland in College Park, where she broke the school’s record in the triple jump at the 2013 NCAA Championships with a distance of 43-05.75.
Later, she went to work as a teacher in the MCPS system, where she taught special education, math, and a course she called Life 101, which taught kids how to open checking accounts, save money, and avoid overextending credit cards, and later leaving her teaching role to focus entirely on her triple jump career.
The Montgomery County Sports Hall of Fame will induct six new members at the Sunday ceremony, including LaFond. The new members include professional soccer player Oguchi Onyewu, four-time All-American lacrosse player Paul Rabil, Olympic ice hockey gold medalist Haley Skarupa, high school football coach Al Thomas (posthumous), and former NFL player Bob Windsor.
Additionally, the ceremony will also include the posthumous presentation of the first Lifetime Achievement Award to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics in 1962 on the grounds of her Rockville home.
More than 500 Montgomery County athletes participate annually in Special Olympics Maryland, which serves over 25,000 athletes and Unified teammates across the state.
According to a press release, Mark Shriver will accept the award on behalf of the Shriver family.
“Our mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, was a pioneer in the worldwide struggle for rights and acceptance for people with intellectual disabilities,” Shriver said. “In 1962, she first invited young people with intellectual disabilities to a summer day camp in her backyard right here in Maryland. Known as ‘Camp Shriver,’ that initiative became Special Olympics—the world’s largest sports movement for people with intellectual disabilities. On behalf of my siblings and myself, I am honored to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Montgomery County Sports Hall of Fame at the birthplace of her vision.”
Sunday’s ceremony marks the sixth class of inductees for the Hall of Fame, which found a permanent home at the Silver Spring Recreation and Aquatic Center in downtown Silver Spring in 2024.
Last year, Montgomery County installed a sculpture at the Recreation and Aquatic Center to honor Olympic gymnast and Silver Spring native Dominique Dawes, who was inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame in 2023.
The current chair of the Sports Hall of Fame board of directors is Bob Milloy, who was inducted as a member in 2019 after 47 years of coaching, during which time he became the winningest football coach in Maryland high school history.
Previous Hall inductees include Olympic swimmer Katie Ledecky, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson, former NFL stars Richie Anderson and Shawn Springs, tennis standout Jeri Ingram, soccer player Bruce Murray, Johnny Holliday, the voice of Maryland sports, and ESPN anchor Scott Van Pelt.
The Montgomery County Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony is free to attend and will take place at 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 4, at the Silver Spring Civic Building, located at 1 Veterans Place in downtown Silver Spring. More information is available online at mcshf.org.
Photo: “Athletissima 2022 8246” by Johann Conus is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.