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ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s most celebrated high school coaches, Rollin Gridley and Mary Hines, were part of the distinguished class. So was Mike Dawson, the most prominent football player born and raised in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. And how about Alex Kellner, a major-league all-star, or Joe Batiste, America’s leading hurdler of the late 1930s and early ’40s?

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s first NBA All-Star, Fat Lever, was a unanimous selection in the class of 1990.

The only apprehension at the newly-created Hall of Fame was how long the fruit would last. The class of ’90 set ridiculously high standards; would the quality become strained as the years rolled by?

The answer to that is a resounding no. The class of 2018 was introduced Wednesday at in a news conference at the DoubleTree Hotel. As the names were announced, it was almost like: “Really? They’re not already in the Hall of Fame?�

The roll call is now approaching 400. It is a fertile sports field.

Introducing:

• Rich Ellerson. He’ll forever be remembered in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ as the creator of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s famed “Desert Swarmâ€� defenses, and, after that, the head coach at Army. How’s that for a career?

Now retired, the Salpointe Catholic grad is a modest man who gave credit to those he worked with, and to the future Army lieutenants he feels so fortunate to help develop at West Point.

“I was a young graduate assistant coach at Hawaii in 1975,� he said Wednesday. “Dick Tomey was hired late in the year and inherited the coaching staff. He stuck by me. That relationship defined my career.�

As for those Desert Swarm defenses, built around consensus All-Americans Tedy Bruschi and Rob Waldrop, Ellerson played it straight.

“We had personnel better than anybody knew,� he said.

• Julie Brase Hairgrove. High school sports records are so fluid that a scoring record or a home run record seem to last, what, two weeks?

But Hairgrove scored 2,913 points at Catalina Foothills High School in the mid-’90s and it remains untouched in the history of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ girls prep basketball. That’s just part of why she is in the class of 2018. She led Foothills to the 1997 state championship, became a team captain at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ for three seasons and has coached in the WNBA for 14 years.

She answered the unavoidable “aren’t you Lute Olson’s granddaughter?â€� questions on Wednesday, but her identity long ago changed. She is probably the top girls high school basketball player in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ history, and her coaching career deserves a similar qualifier.

• Dave Feitl. The Santa Rita High School and UTEP grad chuckled Wednesday when asked why he didn’t play at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ from 1982-86?

“The simple answer is they didn’t recruit me,â€� he said. “I was open to playing at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, but I never got an offer.â€�

That would be unthinkable today. Feitl, at 6 feet 11 inches, was the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ prep Player of the Year in 1980, became UTEP’s No. 2 career scorer and played five years in the NBA.

“If anyone has seen the movie ‘Glory Road,’ they know what I went through at UTEP,� he said.

“Coach Don Haskins pushed you to your limits and made you a better ballplayer. When I got to the NBA I had to guard Larry Bird in my first game. The next game I was told to guard Dr. J, Julius Erving. Coach Haskins helped to prepare me.�

• Jerry Carrillo. Look up the term “gym ratâ€� and you’ll see the image of young Jerry Carrillo, who grew up across the street from Salpointe Catholic and made it the hangout of a lifetime.

After graduating from the UA, he accepted a part-time coaching job with his brother, Ken Carrillo, at small-town Jamestown College in New York.

“I was paid $2,000 a year,� Carrillo says now, laughing at the memory.

It was a down payment on a coaching career in which he has won more than 500 games at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ College, a school he has led to the NJCAA Sweet 16 three times from its tiny campus in Douglas.

Each winter, Carrillo and his Apache men’s basketball players climb onto a bus and drive all over the state, to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, Yuma, Thatcher, Coolidge and parts unknown.

“We get $14 each (in traveling money),� he said. “But it works. We’ve sent more than 140 guys to four-year schools. Winning is fun.�

• Mark Hardy. After playing and teaching tennis most of his adult life, Hardy, a former state champion at Catalina High School and all-WAC player at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, has a cherished baseball trophy at his house.

It is a Gold Glove trophy his son, Baltimore Orioles shortstop J.J. Hardy won during his All-Star baseball career.

Mark and J.J. Hardy are just the second father-son pair to be inducted simultaneously into the hall, and the father is happy his son chose a sport that wasn’t tennis.

“After my college days, I left on the pro tennis tour with $600 in my pocket and a $200 car payment,� he remembers. “I often slept in my car, but I survived for a few years. I rose to as high as No. 270 in the world.�

Don’t laugh.

Consider this: the 270th-ranked NFL player or NBA player today would be a millionaire many times over. J.J. Hardy, a Sabino High School grad who retired last season, earned an estimated $81 million in his baseball career.

• Nanci Reid. Most of what Reid touched in her 25-year career as interscholastics director for TUSD — basically the athletic director of a massive school district — turned out like her sports career at Palo Verde High School and the UA. A class act.

Now retired, Reid was asked Wednesday about the sports she played and helped to organize.

Volleyball? “I loved it,� she said.

Basketball?� Just loved it,� she said.

Swimming? “I enjoyed every minute of it.�

Her career at TUSD? “I loved the coaches, the athletes, the students, even the bus drivers,� she said. “I was so fortunate.�

Former Sahuaro High School state championship softball pitcher Courtnay Foster and Salpointe Catholic High School all-state baseball player Mark Carreon, who played 10 years for the New York Mets, San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers, were unable to attend Wednesday’s press conference. Foster is a softball coach at Alabama-Birmingham, and Carreon was at work in Texas.

“Courtnay started softball when she was 10 ,� her father, Dale Foster, said. “By 11 she turned to pitching and she was all ablaze about softball after that.�

Ablaze? Foster led Northwestern to the 2006 Women’s College World Series, winning a school-record 80 games.

Carreon’s father, Camilio Carreon, who was a catcher for the White Sox, Indians and Orioles, died in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ on Sept. 2, 1987. Mark Carreon had been recalled by the New York Mets and hoped to make his major-league debut that night. Instead, after his father’s funeral, Mark Carreon made his big-league debut six days later.

His father, much like the families of those in the class of 2018, would’ve been so impressed.