Maine Running Hall of Fame to induct 4 Sunday

WATERVILLE – Four outstanding athletes will be inducted into the Maine Running Hall of Fame in a ceremony on Sunday at Killarney’s.

Harold Hatch, Christine Snow-Reaser, Paul Firlotte, and O.J. Logue will join the 66 Maine track and field athletes who have been inducted since the Hall’s inception in 1989.

Hatch, a Castine native, attended Pemetic High School on Mount Desert Island and won the 1956 New England cross country championship as a senior. He also captured the Class M schoolboy mile in a state-record time of 4 minutes, 31.9 seconds. The next year, he was selected by the Bangor Daily News as the first high school athlete to be inducted into the Bangor Daily News Sports Hall of Fame.

Hatch was a captain on the last University of Maine New England cross country championship team. He set a New England masters record in the mile in 1979 with a time of 4:38.6. At age 50, he was second in the National Masters 10K cross country championships and ran 4:58.4 to win the New England 50-plus masters mile.

Snow-Reaser led the Old Orchard Beach schoolgirl team to its first state championship title and won the 800, 1,600, and 3,200 meters. She set the Class C record in the 3,200 meters that still stands today (10:53).

Snow-Reaser continued her running career at Eastern Kentucky University, where she led her team to four Ohio Valley Conference cross country titles, winning individual titles her freshman and senior years. After college, she placed third twice at the Marine Corps Marathon, in 1989 and 1991, and won the Columbia Marathon in 1991.

In 1996, Snow-Reaser competed in the Olympic Marathon Trials in Columbia, S.C. In 2001 and 2002, she won the Maine division competition for women at the Beach-to-Beacon 10K.

Firlotte entered Ellsworth High School in September of 1948 and won his first race against Orono and was undefeated in Maine cross country meets throughout high school. He finished his stellar high school career with a victory in the New England Championships in 1951.

Firlotte is believed to be the only Maine high school cross country runner to go undefeated against Maine competition and was nicknamed the “Ellsworth Express” by BDN sportswriters.

Firlotte attended the University of Maine in Orono and, in an era when freshmen weren’t allowed to compete, won the Yankee Conference championships all three of his varsity years, 1953-55. He ended his career by winning the New England collegiate championship his senior year and leading his University of Maine quintet to the team championship. In 1955 he was named the Maine Athlete of the Year by the BDN, and in 1992 he was inducted into the University of Maine Sports Hall of Fame.

Logue overcame deafness, a speech impairment, and asthma to become one of the state’s best runners. At Orono High School, he served as captain for three state championship teams: cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track.

Logue is a 1977 graduate of the University of Southern Maine where he finished fourth in the NAIA regional qualifying meet in cross country as a sophomore and earned an invitation to the national competition.

Logue achieved two racing milestones in 1981 when he was the first Maine finisher in the Boston Marathon (2:26:06) and won the Maine Coast Marathon (2:27:44).

Logue was also the first person in Maine to compete in the Deaf Olympics and represented the U.S. in track and field in 1981 in Cologne, West Germany. He set personal records there with a 15:01 clocking in the 5K (7th place), and 31:36 in the 10K (6th). He also took sixth in the 25K. In 1982, Logue ran a 30-mile solo benefit run that raised more than $9,000 for the family of Adam Hodge, an 8-year-old battling leukemia.

The induction banquet is 12-3 p.m. Advanced reservations are required and tickets are $20 per person. For reservations, contact Peter Millard at pmillard@adelphia.net.