Norwalk’s Simms 1st boxer inducted
John Kuczo has won nearly every award his late father, Paul, also won during a lifetime spent in local sports.
The one thing John has never done is receive an honor at the same time as his father.
That will change in October when both John and Paul will be inducted into the Fairfield County Sports Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2018.
“This is really an amazing honor for me to be inducted at the same time as my father,” Kuczo said. “My father was a visionary about how sports should be organized in the state. He loved sports and I think some of that rubbed off on me. I think every award he received, I have received. On the national level, the state level and the Fairfield County level. I am so honored to be inducted into the Fairfield County Sports Hall of Fame with my dad who was an inspiration to me and an inspiration to so many ath- letes out of Stamford.”
On Wednesday at the University of Connecticut-Stamford, the 2018 recipients were announced in a news conference.
The Kuczos will be entering the Hall of Fame as part of the J. Walter Kennedy Community Service Wing.
They will be the first father and son inducted at the same time, joining Tom and Jim Penders as the only father-and-son pair in the Hall.
Former Stamford/Trinity Catholic and UConn men’s basketball great Rashamel Jones and former Weston High and Princeton women’s basketball star Claire Beth Tomasiewicz will be going into the James O’Rourke Amateur Wing.
Former welterweight boxing world champion Travis Simms of Norwalk and Olympic women’s hockey gold medalist A.J. Mleczko Griswold of New Canaan will be entering the Jackie Robinson Professional Wing of the Hall of Fame.
The induction ceremony
will take place Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. at the Stamford Marriot.
Kuczo, Simms and Jones attended the news conference and each spoke about the lasting legacy of being immortalized on a plaque.
Kuczo recalled when he was in college, being asked to man the grill as his father and other people involved with state sports formed the Connecticut High School Coaches Association in the Kuczo’s backyard over by Cummings Park in Stamford.
“The powerful teams like Stamford and New Britain could not get teams to play them in a lot of sports so these guys got together to organize what became the Connecticut High School Coaches Association,” Kuczo said. “All these guys came down from all over the state and they all agreed and signed a document starting the (CHSCA). That then led into the forming of the FCIAC a few years later.”
The elder Kuczo would help form the FCIAC, becoming the league’s first president.
Paul Kuczo began a 40year career coaching three sports (football, basketball and baseball) at Stamford High in 1928. In football, he led the Black Knights to 190 wins and four state titles. In baseball, he won 428 games and a state championship and in 23 years as basketball coach his teams won 263 games.
After retiring from coaching, Kuczo became the athletic director at Stamford for 10 years.
John Kuczo spent over half a century involved in high-school sports as a coach and administrator.
After serving as a successful track and field coach at Rippowam High, Kuczo ran the FCIAC as the Executive Secretary/Commissioner from 1978 until he retired in 2016.
As a coach, he won four state and 15 league titles combined in cross country and outdoor track.
Simms, nicknamed “Tremendous” Travis Simms, will be the first boxer to enter the Fairfield County Hall of Fame.
He turned pro at the age of 26 after a stellar amateur career.
Simms became the WBA junior middleweight champion when he scored a fifthround knockout of Alejandro Garcia in 2003, then earned a 12-round decision over Bronco McKart a year later to retain his title.
Simms was stripped of his title in a dispute with the WBA, but he reached an out-of-court settlement in August 2006, when the WBA agreed to reinstate him as the “champion in recess” and beat Jose Antonio Rivera with a ninthround TKO in January 2007 to claim the title once again.
“This is a just as great as winning a world title because it’s not often you get put into a hall of fame,” Simms said. “To be among so many greats like Calvin Murphy, Bobby Valentine and Ralph King is a great feat. I put in a lot of work and I’m the first world champion from Fairfield County. It’s only fitting that I’m the first boxer on the wall, now.”
Tomasiewicz is one of the greatest female athletes to ever grace a court or field in Connecticut, starring in field hockey, basketball and softball.
At Weston High, she became the first girl to score 1,000 career points in basketball, hitting the milestone as a junior before finishing her career with 1,603 points.
She was a part of two undefeated state championship seasons at Weston in 1974 and ’75, averaging 30 points per game.
At Princeton, she scored 1,622 points, taking home three Ivy League titles and becoming the school’s first All-American Women’s basketball player.
She later played in the Women’s Professional Basketball League and was elected to the Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992.
She also played softball for the Brakettes, joining the team as 16-year-old.