Niagara Falls Sports Wall of Fame welcomes 2023 class Sunday
Pictured are the 2022 inductees into the Niagara Falls Sports Wall of Fame. The 2023 class will be inducted Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Gale Centre.
Soccer and boxing will be well-represented when the 2023 class of the Niagara Falls Sports Wall of Fame is inducted this Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Gale Centre.
Seven Niagara Falls-born members of the 2002 national championship Brock men’s soccer team will be inducted as well as Andrea Vescio Sherry, an A.N. Myer product who went on to play NCAA Division 1 soccer at the University of Buffalo.
From the realm of boxing, fighter Donnie Gignac and builder Sonny Pascuzzi will take their place on the wall.
Also being inducted are baseball/hockey builder Vito Scaringi and the Niagara Falls Collegiate Vocational Institute football team from 1972.
The Brock men’s soccer team won the Canadian Interuniversity Sport title 1-0 in overtime over the Carleton Ravens at Carleton. It is the only Brock soccer team to ever win a national title. Niagara Falls members of the team were David Cuviello, Paul Delano, John Folino, Mike Folino, John Gallo, Brian King, and Vince Lepiane.
Vescio Sherry was a five-spot athlete at Myer and captained the girls basketball, volleyball and soccer teams to multiple zone and Southern Ontario Secondary Schools Association championships. The Myer Athlete Wall of Distinction member and four-time female athlete of the year won Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations silver and bronze medals in tennis.
At the club level, the former Team Ontario soccer player won Ontario Cups and League Cup championships in Ontario Women’s Soccer League. She also won Ontario Basketball Association silver medals in the top division.
At the University of Buffalo, she was the captain and top goal scorer and earned countless academic honours. To this day, she remains on Buffalo’s career list for goals and points.
Gignac started boxing competitively in 1986 at the Niagara Falls Boxing Club when he was 13 and won two Ontario titles. He lost by split decision to international hall of famer Arturo Gatti at the Canadian intermediate championships.
Fighting out of the Shamrock Boxing Club, Gignac lost a hard-fought decision to world junior champion Nelson Machado from Cuba.
He captured a senior national featherweight title in 1993, winning three matches, defeating two Olympians and being named the event’s best boxer in the process. Gignac represented Canada at several international championships.
He turned pro in 1994 and won two fights before retiring due to tendon damage in his arms.
Pascuzzi, Ray McGibbon and John Degazio started the Niagara Falls Boxing Club in the late 1970s. Pascuzzi taught the fundamentals of the sport and helped the Niagara Falls club win the outstanding team at the 1983 Roddy McDonald Provincial Championships. All nine boxers he brought won medals, including seven golds.
His coaching career last until the mid-1980s. He coached three provincial junior champions and senior provincial champion Rob Fortuna, who placed second at the 1984 Olympic Trials.
Scaringi has been an executive member of the Niagara Falls Minor Hockey Association and the Greater Niagara Baseball Association for more than two decades, serving as NFMHA vice president and GNBA president for many years. He was also the vice president of the Niagara District Hockey League.
Scaringi was awarded the George MacPhail Award in 2011 and the Doug Austin Award in 2014.
The NFCVI football team ended a 14-year school drought by winning the zone championship in 1972. The team went 8-0, outscoring its opponents 228-26. Three years earlier, the same team had gone 0-7, failing to score a point until the fourth game of the season.
Members of the team Jerry Pasco, Tony Scaringi, Rick Calisina, Joe Wallace. Luigi Parri, Bruce Murray, Frank Candeloro, Albert Massi, Jamie Chevers, Tony Cuviello, Tony Costa, Larry Sirianni, Mike Rabishaw. Luigi Pietrouisti, Louis Vescio, Joe Palumbo, Joe Murray, Julian Peters, Kenneth Stanley Plata, Zoltan Dohar, Jim Anderson, Tom Mizibrocky, Barry Rabishaw, Otto Roman, Sam Mangiacasale, Tony DiToro, Dave Mesina, Gary Farrington, Brian Rizzo, Ed Seibert, Rino Ferruccio, Vito Forte, Jerry Hunt, Mike McDonnell and John Pizzolato.
