Jun. 15—Former head football coach Jack Cosgrove and 10-year National Hockey League veteran Gustav Nyquist will be among the newest inductees into the University of Maine Sports Hall of Fame later this summer.
Other honorees will include former softball standout Brittney Cheney, two-time All-American football player Aaron Dashiell, 1984 New England baseball player of the year Rick Lashua, two-time All-America distance runner Riley Masters, two-time German Olympic women’s ice hockey player Raffi Wolf and the 1998 University of Maine women’s basketball team, which scored the school’s only NCAA Tournament victory.
The induction dinner and ceremony will be held at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 17, at Jeff’s Catering in Brewer.
Cosgrove is the winningest coach in UMaine football history, with 123 victories in 23 years. He earned all-conference honors playing quarterback for the Black Bears from 1974 to 1977. The three-time Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year finalist and a three-time conference coach of the year guided the Black Bears to five NCAA berths and three league titles. In 2001, Cosgrove was named the American Football Monthly I-AA National Coach of the Year after leading UMaine to a 9-3 mark and a berth to the second round of the NCAA FCS playoffs.
Nyquist totaled 43 goals and 94 assists in 113 games over three years with the UMaine hockey team. The 2010 American Hockey Coaches Association East first-team All-American was a two-time finalist for the Hobey Baker Award and led the Black Bears in points scored in each of his seasons. Twice named to the All-Hockey East first team, Nyquist, a fourth-round pick of the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings, spent eight seasons in Detroit before a stop in San Jose and one year with the Columbus Blue Jackets. He has generated 146 goals and 202 assists in 570 career games.
Masters set school records in the 1500 meter, 3000 meter, 5000 meter and mile runs. He captured gold in the 3000 meter at the 2010 America East Indoor Championships and was a two-time America East cross country individual champion. The Bangor standout broke the 4-minute barrier in the mile with a 3:58.17 clocking at the 2010 Boston University Valentine Invitational, and later that season clocked in at 3:59.07 at Columbia’s Last Chance meet. Masters placed fifth in the mile at the 2010 NCAA Indoor Championships and ninth in the same event in 2011 before concluding his college career at the University of Oklahoma.
Lashua helped the UMaine baseball team make four consecutive appearances in the College World Series from 1981 to 1984, batting .337 in CWS play. A two-time NCAA regional all-tournament team choice, the center fielder from Danville appeared in 22 NCAA postseason games, the most in UMaine baseball history. An All-New England first-team selection in 1984, Lashua hit .352 with 174 hits, 27 doubles, eight triples and 19 home runs during his final three years in Orono.
Dashiell is one of four UMaine football players to twice be named a Division I-AA All-American. The defensive back, first-team and all-conference selection in 1998 and 1999, he led the Black Bears with 100 tackles in 1998 and 105 stops in 1999. In 2018, Dashiell was named assistant director of athletics for student-athlete development at Holy Cross.
Cheney was a four-time All-America East honoree, earning first-team honors each of her last three seasons with the Black Bears’ softball team. As a senior in 2004 she led UMaine to a 35-19 record, the conference championship and an NCAA tournament berth. Cheney had a .329 career batting average with 104 runs scored, 198 hits, 18 home runs and 100 RBI to go with a .502 slugging percentage and 40 stolen bases.
Wolf is the first women’s ice hockey player to be inducted into the UMaine Sports Hall of Fame after representing her native country and the Black Bears on Team Germany at both the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics. Wolf ranks third in school history with 55 career goals and is fifth in career points (92), second in single-season goals (31), fourth in season points (43), and tied for first with 17 career power-play goals. Wolf also set the UM school record for points as a freshman with 43 during the 1998-99 season.
The 1998-99 women’s basketball team coached by Joanne Palombo-McCallie went 24-7 before earning an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. There, the 10th-seeded Black Bears upset No. 7 Stanford 60-58 for the program’s first NCAA Tournament victory in the sport. UMaine, which won that year’s America East regular-season title with a 17-1 record, was led by Jamie Cassidy, who averaged 23.8 points and 8.5 rebounds, and captain Amy Vachon, a point guard from Augusta who set a school single-season record with 234 assists.
A previous version of this story contained the incorrect date of the UMaine Sports Hall of Fame banquet. It will be held Sept. 17.