The membership of the Utah Sports Hall of Fame is growing and the 2025 class is a notable one.
The Utah Sports Hall of Fame Foundation announced Monday morning five inductees in the 2025 class, who will be honored on Sept. 22 at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City.
They are, listed in alphabetical order:
- Mary Kay Amicone.
- John Buck.
- Wally Joyner.
- Stew Morrill.
- Holly Rowe.
Get to know the inductees below.
Mary Kay Amicone
Amicone has been a staple in the baseball and softball world in Utah. She compiled more than 800 victories during her softball coaching career, which included stints at BYU, Salt Lake Community College and Weber State.
A Murray High School graduate, Amicone also coached Bingham High School to a softball state championship.
Also of note, Amicone was the first female coach of a Utah high school baseball team, when she led the Jordan Beetdiggers.
John Buck
A Taylorsville High School alumnus, Buck was drafted out of high school by the Houston Astros in 1998 and over the course of an 11-year career at the major league baseball level he played for seven different teams:
- Kansas City Royals.
- Toronto Blue Jays.
- Miami Marlins.
- New York Mets
- Pittsburgh Pirates.
- Seattle Mariners.
- Los Angeles Angels.
Over the course of his career, Buck totaled 844 hits, 134 home runs, 389 runs scored and 491 runs batted in (RBIs) while holding a career batting average of .234.
Wally Joyner
Joyner isn’t a native Utahn, but the Georgia native became a longtime Mapleton resident. After his collegiate career at BYU, Joyner was drafted by the then-California Angels in 1983.
He spent more time with the Angels than any other team in his career, seven seasons in total, and also had stints with the Kansas City Royals, the San Diego Padres and the Atlanta Braves.
Over the course of 16-years playing in the big leagues, Joyner played in over 2,000 games (2,033) and finished with over 2,000 hits (2,060), while boasting a career batting average of .289.
After his playing career was finished, Joyner transitioned into coaching and worked as a hitting coach for three MLB teams — the Padres, Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia Phillies.
Stew Morrill
Morrill has a long history with basketball in the state of Utah.
As a player himself, he starred at Provo High School and then went on to become an All-American at Ricks College in Idaho and then two-time All-Big Sky selection at Gonzaga.
His coaching career got its start at Gonzaga, and then included stop in Montana and Colorado before he returned to the Beehive State.
His return landed him at Utah State in 1998, where he became a legend.
Over the course of his 17-year tenure as the head coach of the Aggies, Morrill won nearly three-fourths of his games coached which equaled 402 total wins.
He led Utah State to 14 straight seasons with at least 21 wins from 2000 to 2013, a stretch that included 13 straight postseason appearances, be it in the NCAA Tournament, the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) or the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament (CIT).
Holly Rowe
Rowe is recognized across the country by college sports fans for her work with ESPN as a sideline reporter for some of the biggest games/events every year.
A graduate of both Woods Cross High School and the University of Utah, Rowe is pretty inarguably the most recognizable media personality from the state.
Passionate especially in her coverage of women’s college basketball and women’s college sports in general, Rowe is also a major part of ESPN’s college football and men’s college basketball coverage. She is the lead sideline reporter for ESPN’s coverage of Saturday-night college football, women’s college basketball, the WNBA, the Women’s College World Series (softball) and NCAA’s women’s volleyball tournament.
She also has been a part of the Utah Jazz broadcast, as a commentator, starting in 2021.