In 2023, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame will introduce a diverse class, including celebrity history first goalscorer, Olympic goalscorer Tony Rosetti.
The class to be honored at the ceremony next July also includes basketball and women’s basketball coach Carol Ross, Major League Baseball standout Paul Maholm, Millsaps baseball player and coach Jim Page, and former players and professional footballers Jeff Herrod, John Mangum, Patrick. Surtain and Lewis Tillman.
Jeff Herrod: A Birmingham native Herrod went to the US Marines before being offered a football scholarship from Ole Miss where he played for the Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Billy Brewer. By the time he ended up at Ole Miss, Herrod was the second-ever leader in the history of the Southeast Conference. He then played for the Indianapolis Colts, where he led the team in duels for seven of his 11 seasons, and is the series’ best player ever.
Paul Maholm: Born in Holly Springs, Maholm chose the Mississippi baseball scholarship over the Minnesota Twins bonus. It was a wise decision. As a left-handed pitcher for Pat McMahon and Ron Polk, he excelled at the State where he is the fifth winning pitcher in school history. Maholm was the eighth pick in the 2003 Major League draft. He spent 10 years at Major Leagues with Pirates, Cubs, Braves, and Dodgers. Maholm is a member of Ron Polk’s State Ring of Honor.
John Mangum: He will be the first of the amazing Magee family to be introduced to MSHOF. Mangum’s father, John Mangum, was a football star in the Southern Miss and the old American Football League. Kris’s younger brother played for Ole Miss and the NFL. Jake Mangum’s son is one of Mississippi’s premier baseball players and is AAA-level with the New York Mets. The younger John Mangum chose Alabama over Southern Miss after he became Player of the Year at Mississippi High and joined the Alabama Team of the Decade in the 1980s before embarking on a nine-year career with the Chicago Bears. He still holds the career record of a career broken in Alabama with 47.
Jim Page: Holds the school’s Millsaps hit record with a 0.487 batting average and has led Millsaps baseball teams to 815 wins, eight NCAA regional appearances and one College World Series appearance. Page is a famous hitting instructor who has trained literally thousands of players from the Jackson area during their summer baseball camps.
Tony Rosetti: A native of Biloxi and a West Point resident, Rosetti started firing a rifle as a young teenager and was selected for the 1970 All American Sports Afield team. He won the United States Clay Pigeon Championship in 1971 and was on the team that won the gold medal in the 1971 Pan American Games. In 1972, he was part of the U.S. Olympic shooting team at the Munich Olympics and is housed in the Hall of Fame of the National Shooting Association. He retired from the Clay Pigeon competition in 1992 and is now an accomplished golfer at Old Waverly.
Carol Ross: Born in Yalobusha County, Oakland, Ross was a prominent basketball player from MSHOF coach Van Chancellor in Ole Miss, where she formed the first SEC Women’s Tournament in 1980. 333 and is only one of two players in school history to score 1,000 points, 500 assists and 250 steals. She later served as head coach in both Florida, where she became SEC coach of the year twice, and with Ole Miss. She was the head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks where she became WNBA Coach of the Year in 2012.
Patrick Surtain: A four-sport star of New Orleans high school, Surtain played for Hall of Famer Jeff Bower on Southern Miss, where he became Defender of the Year at the 1997 US Conference. He was a runner-up for the Miami Dolphins in 1998 and was a three-time Pro Bowl selection in his 11-year career in the NFL. He was named NFL Defense Back of the Year in 2002. Surtain, member of the Southern Miss Team of the Century, currently coach of the Dolphins.
Lewis Tillman: With Hazlehurst, Tillman decided to play college football for MSHOF member W.C. Gorden at Jackson State, where he pounced on 3,989 yards, broke several Walter Payton records and became SWAC Player of the Year in 1987 when he gained 1,474 yards. This season, in a 17-7 loss to Southern Miss, Tillman won the entire Southern Miss team. He won the 1991 New York Giants Super Bowl ring. He played five seasons for the Giants, then two with the Chicago Bears where he was a teammate with John Mangum.
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