Jessica Bendzick/ Winonan
Last week, six new Warriors were added to the Winona State University Athletic Hall of Fame.
This year’s inductees were: Dan Samp (’75); Dan Thill (’78); Maureen (Ryan) Giroux (’93); Rachel (Seifert) Mihalic (’02); Liz Narten (’03); and Chris Samp (’04).
Chris Samp, a football inductee, was informed of his Hall of Fame induction last spring by his previous head coach, Tom Sawyer.
Samp said, “It’s really special to have your head coach be the guy to call and let you know.”
Samp was a wide receiver who helped his football team achieve four postseason appearances, earned NSIC Offensive Player of the Year and was a two-time All-American. He finished his career with 222 catches for 4,471 yards and 53 touchdowns.
“It was a pretty cool moment, because I certainly wasn’t expecting anything,” he said.
Samp said he redshirted his freshman year and received a medical redshirt his sophomore year.
“I was undersized. I came into college the smallest player on the team by far,” Samp said. “I started lifting weights and put on like 25 pounds of muscle.”
It was the last game of his junior year season Winona State played Minnesota Duluth, and the final score of the game would determine which team would advance to the playoffs, Samp said.
In the final seconds of the game, Samp made a one-handed catch in the end zone to win the game for the Warriors, he said.
Samp said, “That [catch] propelled my confidence a little more and lowered the pressure of trying to be a standout.”
The Warriors later went on to lose to North Dakota, who was crowned the national championship that year.
Samp said his next year he was thrown the ball a lot more, and in his final two years he become a starter.
Samps, along with the five other inductees, were honored on Saturday, Oct. 25, at the Athletic Hall of Fame Banquet.
Jill Bratberg, assistant athletics director and Hall of Fame committee chair, said the Hall of Fame is a nomination process and anyone can nominate an athlete.
Twenty people make up the Hall of Fame committee, and they meet four times every year. There is a Hall of Fame sub-committee, who narrows the original nominee list down by going through all the individuals’ records, files and championships, and then the whole committee comes together to vote on who will be inducted. The maximum number that can be inducted every year is six, Bratberg said.
Bratberg said when it comes to notifying the inductees, the committee tries to select who would be the best person to notify and call them.
Bratberg said, “That’s a fun call to get.”
Samp, who graduated with a mass communications degree, originally wanted to be a sports broadcaster. He is currently working in medical sales in Green Bay, Wis.
“I’m still in shock,” he said. “I never really saw myself as a standout player. I was just part of a really good program.”
