Michael Roos heads 2016 class for EWU Athletics Hall of Fame
Michael Roos has his name on the Eastern Washington University football stadium. Now it’ll be enshrined in the trophy case inside Reese Court, too.
The football All-American and three other former Eagles standouts – Ed Waters, Becky Nelson-Clark and Steve Kiesel – have been tabbed for induction into the EWU Athletics Hall of Fame.
The 16th class, which will also include the previously announced 1976-77 men’s basketball team that included Waters, will be honored at a breakfast ceremony on Oct. 1 in the EWU Special Events Pavilion (Reese Court) at 8 a.m.
This year’s inductees will bring the number of individuals in the shrine to 78 and teams to 14.
Roos (2001-04), who didn’t start playing football until his senior year in high school at Mountain View in Vancouver, Washington, came to Eastern as a tight end. He played his first year on the defensive line before moving to offensive tackle. His senior year he earned five All-America honors and was named the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (then I-AA) Lineman of the Year.
He was drafted in the second round of the 2005 NFL draft with the 41st selection by the Tennessee Titans and had a 10-year career. He started all 226 games in which he played in a collegiate and pro career that was interrupted a couple of times by injuries before announcing his retirement on Feb. 26, 2015. Roos earned All-Pro honors three times and played in the Pro Bowl following the 2008 season.
Roos and his wife Katherine, both Eastern graduates, contributed $500,000 toward having a red Sprinturf surface installed at Woodward Field in time for the 2010 season. The stadium was renamed Roos Field in their honor and Eastern went 8-0 on the new surface en route to winning the 2010 NCAA Division I title.
They also established the Michael Roos Foundation to support local nonprofit organizations, including EWU’s Eagle Athletic Association, Special Olympics in Washington and Boys and Girls Clubs of Spokane County.
Waters (1974-77), a record-breaking point guard from Los Angeles, played on four of the most successful men’s basketball teams in school history, compiling a 77-30 record and coming within a win his junior and senior seasons from qualifying for the NAIA national tournament. The 1976-77 team went 25-4, winning a school-record 86 percent of its games.
Play-making was Waters’ game. In his career, he dished out 763 assists in 91 games, an 8.4 per-game average, highlighted by 292 assists (10.8) as a junior. He set three school and Evergreen Conference records – 17 in a game, 292 in a season and 763 in a career. He still has the top three single-season assist averages in school history (11.0, 10.8, 8.1) and three of the top five totals (292, 231, 170), and is 332 assists ahead of the No. 2 player on the career list.
Waters is a successful coach of the renowned basketball program at Crenshaw High School in L.A. where he played. He has received five coach-of-the-year honors in eight seasons.
Nelson-Clark (1968-71) from Mead was a national champion in track and field, a school record holder and a pioneer in women’s sports before Title IX was enacted in 1972 during an abbreviated three-year career at Eastern.
She won the high jump at the 1971 National Intercollegiate Track and Field Championships for Women, which were hosted by Eastern, at 5 feet, 2 inches after placing second in the nationals at the same height the year before. She leaped a school-record 5-6 1/2 during the 1971 season, a mark that stood for 14 seasons. It is still No. 6 on the school’s all-time list.
She also competed in the long jump – she jumped a school-record 18 feet in 1969 – and ran legs on the school’s third-place 440-yard and sixth-place 880-yard relay teams as Eastern placed fifth as a team at the ’71 nationals.
Nelson-Clark, the West Coast champion in the heptathlon in 1970, left Eastern following the 1971 school year to attend the University of Washington, where she competed one season while receiving a degree in physical therapy. She has had a long career in sports medicine and physical therapy in the Spokane and Cheney area.
Kiesel (1976-79) from Tacoma was a two-time All-American and still the school record holder in the 800 meters outdoors at 1 minute, 48.51 seconds in a two-year career at Eastern following a stellar two years at Spokane Community College.
After winning the NAIA District 1 championship in the 800 in 1977 he placed fourth in the NAIA Nationals with his school-record time to earn All-America honors.
He missed the 1978 season with an injury but was the No. 2 ranked 800-meter runner nationally in the NAIA and NCAA Division II in 1979. He again won the NAIA District 1 800 and anchored Eastern’s winning mile relay team but failed to place in the NAIA Nationals. He placed fifth in the NCAA D-II Championships to earn an NCAA All-America award.
Kiesel, who also won the 800 at the prestigious Prefontaine Classic in Eugene and has been inducted into the Community Colleges of Spokane and Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges halls of fame, is a successful high school coach at Mead. His 2007 and 2008 cross country teams won State 4A championships.