A Home for the Hall: YMCA wall puts Mifflin County sports history on display

BURNHAM - The photographs of Mifflin County's athletes and coaches now meet visitors inside the Juniata Valley YMCA, where a new Hall of Fame wall gives the county's sports history a permanent public home.

The display stretches across the lobby near the entrance. Framed photographs and biographies recognize the Mifflin County Sports Hall of Fame's 2026 class: Nic Bedelyon, Joe Daubert, Holly Loht-Yeager, D. Charles "Charlie" Roselle and Joe Stewart. The 1986 Chief Logan girls cross country PIAA Class AA state championship team and Jon Zimmerman Volunteer Award recipient Greg Williams are also honored.

Below the center sign, another frame records the Hall of Fame's previous classes, team honorees and Zimmerman Award recipients. A QR code takes visitors to the organization's website, where they can learn more and become members. The display is open to YMCA members and other visitors alike.

The wall is doing what its organizers hoped it would do.

"You wouldn't believe the amount of people that are stopping and looking at the pictures, who are talking about stories that they remember from that person," YMCA Executive Director Victoria Searer said. "Some of the younger kids are stopping and looking at it, so it is exactly what we wanted to happen."

The idea grew from conversations between Searer and Cher Harpster, secretary of the Mifflin County Sports Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame leaders had discussed finding a place where the organization could display its honorees beyond the annual induction banquet. Other locations had been considered, but Searer believed the YMCA offered the natural connection.

"The YMCA is a fitness place," she said. "You have a natural connection to athletics and achievements. We want to inspire the next generation."

Searer offered the lobby wall. Ed Stewart attended a Hall of Fame meeting, heard members discussing the same need and connected the two ideas. He enlisted Dave Semler, and the project began.

It took about two months. One of the most difficult jobs involved gathering usable photographs of every honoree. Kish Printing & Promotional Products, which produces the Hall of Fame's banquet programs, had images from the previous classes. The company enlarged the photographs and prepared the biographical panels.

Stewart purchased frames large enough for visitors to read the biographies. Susie Bender created the white Hall of Fame sign mounted above the center of the display. YMCA maintenance employee Keith Goss cleared the wall, touched up the paint, assembled the frames and spaced them across the lobby.

"It turned out way better than Dave and I ever thought," Stewart said. "I mean, it just went together."

Searer chose the lobby deliberately. She didn't want the display placed in a room that visitors might never enter, so she chose space directly inside the doors.

"I want everybody that walks in here to be able to see it," she said.

The location also connects the wall to the people whose photographs fill it. Searer attends the Hall of Fame banquets and has heard inductees describe working out at the YMCA or participating in its youth programs. For her, the wall records that relationship as much as it preserves names and accomplishments.

"Again, it warms my heart that the Y is a part of a lot of the inductees' stories," she said.

The Hall of Fame was founded in 2020 and inducted its first class in 2021. The wall adds a year-round public display to its banquet programs and online biographies, putting that record where people pass it every day.

It will change each spring. When a new class enters, its photographs will take the featured positions. The previous class will move into the frame containing earlier honorees. The 2003 Lewistown baseball state championship team has already been selected as the 2027 team honoree.

The growing display will eventually require a larger frame for the previous classes. Stewart considers that a welcome problem. More names will mean more stories, and more chances for someone walking through the YMCA to stop.

"I think a lot of pride," Stewart said of what he hopes visitors feel. "This has been a great community for our sports. I think it's been a long time coming, something like this."

Now, the county's sports history hangs inside the YMCA doors, where the next generation walks past it every day.