Cardinal HOF Inductees

October 6, 2016 by Rich Kelly

Last year’s Cardinal Hall of Fame night featured special skydivers who landed perfectly onto the surface of Richard A. Moss Field before the football game.

This year, inclement weather would not have allowed that to happen. But thanks to a brief ceasing of the rains just before game time as the Huskies hosted the Fairport Skippers in Chagrin Valley Conference, the Hall of Fame ceremonies went on as planned.

There were nine inductees in all, including four with athletic achievements.

Jason Driscoll, class of 1996, was a great athlete who excelled in baseball. He holds the school record for wins with 29, and the strikeout record with 304. His dozen wins in 1995 are tied for most in school history in a single season, and he is the career leader in hits (158), doubles (36), triples (11), runs (187) and stolen bases (173). In 1996, he was first team All Ohio, and followed his Cardinal career with four years at The Ohio State University and four years playing in the Frontier League.

Josh Yoder, also class of 1996, had a .520 average as a senior, leading the way with nine homers and 59 runs batted in. He holds the school record for RBIs in a season, and owns the second and third best season totals for hits. Tragically, his life was cut short by an automobile accident.

Shawn Ebbert, class of 1995, was a two-time state champion in wrestling. He won a title as a junior at 160 pounds, and again as a senior at 152 pounds. He was also a three-time sectional champion and two-time district champion.

Don Hostetler, class of 1962, was the first Husky to win a state title. He won the half mile title in 1960, which is now the 800 meter run. He held the school records for the 440 and 880 for years, and as a college runner at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, he held several other records. In later years he became a teacher and track coach in Florida.

Five more alumni received Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame awards.

Dr. Stephanie Melillo, class of 2001, became a star in the world of paleoanthropology. She is an expert in the field of evolution of human shoulder joints and bipedal motion. Melillo attended Case Western Reserve University and graduated in 2005 magna cum laude. She holds a doctorate from Stanford University; is a guest lecturer at Stanford, Cal Tech, University of California Santa Cruz; and has been a member since 2006 of the Worsano-Mille Paleontological Project in Afar, Ethiopia. Today she is a postdoctoral researcher for the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

Amy Lukas, class of 1989, is a founding partner for the Infinite Scale Design Group, a sports design consultancy firm. As a three-sport athlete at Cardinal, she went to the University of Cincinnati College of Design. Among her accomplishments is the design process for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. She has worked on Super Bowls 39 through 43, Yankee Stadium, NHL championships and the Sundance Film Festival, and has been guest lecturer at several events for the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Kevin Pollari, class of 1981, was a four-sport athlete at Cardinal. He graduated magna cum laude from Case Western Reserve University with degrees in electrical engineering and applied physics. He has been involved in leading two major corporations, the Accenture Group and Deloitte Consulting. Pollari has been a 12-year leader in a $10 million fundraising effort to build a new Camp Summit for disabled adults and children in Dallas, Texas. He recently has also been board chairman of the Dallas chapter of Back on My Feet, serving the homeless population.

Dr. Felicia Ladd Todd, class of 1963, is a graduate of The Ohio State University and The University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She also has a PhD in educational psychology from Purdue. She has enjoyed a great career in education for gifted and talented students. She retired in 2008, and currently is Professor Emeritus in Psychology at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

Finally, the Lifetime Achievement Award was bestowed on Alfred J. (A.J.) Jordak, who was involved with Cardinal Schools his entire adult life. He was a teacher and coach at Parkman High in 1933, coming to the Middlefield district in the late 1930s, where he was also a teacher and coach. He became superintendent in 1944, and supervised the creation of the Cardinal Local School District in the 1950s. That involved merging the Middlefield, Huntsburg and Parkman districts, as well as the building of the current Cardinal High School building in the early 1960s.

Jordak retired in 1969, and the current elementary school is named in his honor.

As the weather settled down to honor these great Cardinal grads and their legacies, followed by the football team, band and cheerleaders adding to their own, it was a very good night in Middlefield.