McDaniel College inducted five honorees into its annual Sports Hall of Fame last night, including a 1971 alumnus whose two sons are wrestlers on the Green Terror championship team.
The Sports Hall of Fame, created in 1978 and sponsored by the McDaniel College Alumni Association, is designed to honor former athletes who have acquired prominence in their chosen fields and made contributions to society. There are 131 McDaniel College athletic standouts in the Hall of Fame. While on campus from 1967 to 1971, Arthur Blake Jr. of Betterton played football, baseball and wrestling and was captain of all three sports in his senior year. He earned the Outstanding Freshman Player Award for football and won awards in all three sports.
He was awarded the college's John A. Alexander Medal for outstanding athletes at graduation. Since then, he has been a successful coach. In 1999, he was inducted into the Maryland Wrestling Hall of Fame for coaching. Other inductees were:
John H. Hort, 1958, of Newport News, Va. Hort ran on the track team all four years, going undefeated in the 120-yard high hurdles and the 880-yard run. He was also team captain. He also played football for three years. In 1958, he received the John A. Alexander Medal and was named in Who's Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities.
Hort served as president and executive director for the Peninsula Track Club from 1986 to 1995. In 1991, he was named Volunteer of the Year by the Road Runners Club of America.
Nancy Kammerer Pusey, 1988, of Street, played field hockey and basketball. She also excelled at lacrosse. In 1988, the All-America U.S. Women's Lacrosse Association honored her. She was also named to The Middle Atlantic Conference Women's Lacrosse All-Star team.
She has continued playing and coaching since graduation. In 1990, Pusey was head coach of women's field hockey at Essex Community College and she plays in a Harford County summer lacrosse league.
Susan Lapidus Spencer, 1983, of Cherry Hill, N.J., was a swimmer as an undergraduate, winning All-American, National Qualifier and Division Champions. She set records in the 200 backstroke, 100 backstroke, 500 freestyle and relays.
After graduation, she became a high school swim team coach, taught swimming to the disabled and implemented a swim program for a chain of day care centers. She has also competed in long distance ocean swims and triathlons.
Laszlo Zsebedics, 1963, of Forest Hill, was a member of the Hungarian professional soccer team from 1951 to 1954. His talents with the Green Terror soccer team earned him All-American honors in 1961. After graduating, Zsebedics taught physical education and coached soccer, gymnastics and indoor track at Baltimore County schools. He took a two-year sabbatical to become an exchange teacher with the American International School in Vienna, Austria, in 1968 and 1969.
In 1971, his soccer team became Maryland State Champions, and he was awarded Coach of the Year for Baltimore County. In 1979, he coached the Bel Air Spirit, an under-19 soccer team that traveled to Scandinavia and competed in the Goteborg Invitational Cup. He retired in 1993 after 30 years in the Baltimore County school system.