The Hall of Fame Interviews Hall of Fame President, Ron Kubicki
Newsletter Editor, Nicole Nearhood, interviews Ron Kubicki, President of the Hall of Fame.
Q: What new and exciting things are happening at the Hall of Fame so far in the new year?
Kubicki: We just started running videos of historic, past games, we are showing games that people will really rememeber and we have hundreds and hundreds of games that were taped that we are planning on converting to DVD for people to see.
Q: Since opening the Hall of Fame, have you seen the financial return that you were hoping for?
Kubicki: No. We still have a $200,000 dollar loan to pay off, if anyone thinks we are finished here, we are not. There is still the upkeep of the museum, we are hoping to make a display case that is portable as our next project. We hope to get a grant from the state, companies, and of course our softball community.
Q: What do you see for the future of 16-inch Softball?
Kubicki: We still want to promote the sport. Some of the ways we are doing that is with this DePaul class we have been teaching, we have actually restructured it so we are gong to do the class and the actual clinic at the hall of fame. The kids who took the class loved it, after we got done with the DePaul class we asked how many will go out there and try to play the game and everyone raised their hands. We are going to try to contact U of I and schools in the Chicago area. We are hopefully going to entice the Chicago high schools as well. I still think there is a future as long as we keep people involved. The best teams are in their 40's, when the age of the game keeps going up you can tell how that is hurting the game.
Q: How has the word on the Hall of Fame spread?
Kubicki: Great, in fact we have even had a request from people in Iowa to call it the national hall of fame of 16 inch softball, advertise it that way, and include people from other states. This sounds very interesting and the board will consider whether to start to include them in the process. We think that might help be a selling tool.
Q: What next for the Hall of Fame?
Kubicki: What we need to do is start paying off the loan, and getting more hall of famers back involved. We don't see as many young people out playing in the fields, so we want to work on that too.
