The Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame is a program which honors the significant contributions of legendary local athletes and visionaries who have not only achieved in their sport or industry, but have given back to the Wood River Valley community in ways that have furthered the development of the sport: Alpine Skiing, Nordic Skiing, Ice Hockey, Figure Skating, Snowboarding, and Freestyle Skiing. The inductee stories are showcased in the Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History’s Regional History Museum.
Class of 2021 Inductees
The induction ceremony for the Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2021 was held on Wednesday, December 8. Find event details here.
Lisa-Marie Allen
Olympic figure skater, choreographer, and coach.
K2 Demonstration Team
Pat Bauman, Bob Griswold, Charlie McWilliams, and Jim Stelling: skiers and performers.
Lane Monroe
Skier, U.S. Ski Team coach, former Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation Program Director and Head Alpine Coach.
John Weekes
Sun Valley Suns ice hockey architect, coach-manager, and player.
Class of 2019 Inductees
Graham Anderson, an active and significant contributor to the ski industry for seventy years, has a list of accolades including induction into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1984. He was a ski patroller and a board member/mentor to the SVSEF.
Dick Dorworth, a ski racer, world-record holder for downhill time in the Diamond Sun race, coach, mountaineer, award-winning journalist, and author of four books, is also an inductee in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2011.
Sonya Dunfield, a world champion figure skater, elite coach in the SV figure skating training center for many years, is an inductee in both the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2009, and before that awarded the Professional Skaters Association’s Shulman Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1982.
Averell Harriman, as Board Chairman of Union Pacific Railroad, created the Sun Valley Resort in 1936. He was responsible for the first ski lift on Dollar Mountain and initiated ski racing at Sun Valley by starting the Harriman Cup race in 1937. Harriman is also an inductee in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1969.
Bob Jonas, a pioneer in the backcountry ski industry, established five backcountry yurts in the 80s and 90s, co-founded the Wood River Nordic and Backcountry Skiers Alliance of Idaho in 1998 that helped to initiate the “Winter Snow Pact,” a successful skier/snowmobiler collaboration that went to win a “Spirit of Idaho” award.
Herman Maricich, head of the Sun Valley Skating School for many years, started the indoor ice rink in 1975, and created the “Sun Valley on Ice” shows. Herman was instrumental in making Sun Valley a year round ice skating facility, which made it possible to be a much loved training center and destination for world-class ice skaters.
Doran Key, an accomplished athlete, a beloved coach for Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation for over thirty years, she was awarded the SVSEF Jack Simpson Dedicated Coaches Award in 2009. Key was involved in Kindercup as the Head “D” Team Coach. Many young WRV ski competitors have had her as a coach.
Jim Savaria, one of the co-founders of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation, has been a beloved coach for many years. He coached Olympians as well as taught kids at Rotarun when the rope-tow was first installed in the 50s. Savaria worked as a ski patrol and helped to develop safety protocols.
Class of 2014 Inductees
Jack Simpson
Jack Simpson grew up herding cows at the family ranch in Wendell. He moved to Sun Valley in 1939 where he fell in love with skiing. He earned the nickname “Sonja” after he donned a blond wig to stand in as Sonja Henie’s skiing double in the movie “Sun Valley Serenade.” (Excerpted from Eye on Sun Valley, February 14, 2015.)
Simpson was a candidate for the national ski team, but his father talked him out of it, saying he wasn’t going to make any money there, noted longtime friend Jerry Edwards.
In the 1960s, Simpson established a junior racing program, which evolved into the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation. The Foundation honored him several years ago by establishing the Jack Simpson Dedicated Coaches Award, presented annually to the coach that best exemplifies Simpson’s values.
Sigi Engl
A native of Kitzbuhel, Engl became a ski instructor at 15. He won the Italian downhill and slalom championships in 1931 and the Hahnenkahm combined and the Marmolata downhill in 1935. He also won the Austrian slalom and downhill championships twice before immigrating to the United States in 1937.
He came to Sun Valley to teach in 1939, winning Sun Valley’s prestigious Harriman Cup in 1941. In 1952, he became the director of the Sun Valley Ski School, after having served in the 10th Mountain Division in Italy during World War II.
Sigi’s Bowl on Bald Mountain is a lasting tribute to his innovative instructional methods that vaulted Sun Valley’s ski school into international prominence. (Excerpted from Eye on Sun Valley, February 14, 2015.)
Muffy Davis
Marc Mast, who taught Muffy Davis how to ski again after she was paralyzed from the chest down in a training run at age 16, asked members of the audience to close their eyes and imagine they were sitting on a beach ball with a ski underneath it.
Then imagine you’re skiing the same downhill course that the Olympic racers skied at 70 miles per hour, he added. That’s was what it was like for Muffy racing in the Paralympics, where she earned a fistful of medals.
“(Ski Coach) Mike Brown said he had never seen anyone who could follow a line like Muffy. That goes to her intelligence and what the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation taught her,” he added. (Excerpted from Eye on Sun Valley, February 14, 2015.)
