Photo Album
Ron Adams Induction Video
Rafael De Cicco
Lin Gao
Dennis Janzen
Fresno Pacific inducted five new members into its Athletics Hall of Fame on Monday night, celebrating the university's rich athletic tradition with its annual Hall of Fame Banquet.
This year's class included former basketball player/coach and current Chicago Bulls assistant Ron Adams, Director of Athletics and former volleyball coach Dennis Janzen, former basketball player Randy Pfost, former volleyball player Lin Gao and former men's soccer player Rafael DeCicco.
It was a night of rememberance, laughs and stories as people came together to remember the ways in which God has used Fresno Pacific University to leave a lasting impression on the lives of others. Videos of the acceptance speeches will be posted on YouTube, and linked at the top of this page, in the coming days.
Tonight's inductees:
Ron Adams (coach) - Men's Basketball (Player: 1965-1969, Coach: 1969-1974) [Presenter- Gary Nachtigall]
One of the most distinguished alumni to ever come out of Fresno Pacific, Ron Adams started his career on the freshman men's basketball team in 1965. A 6'0 guard from Laton, California, Adams scored a school-record 43 points in a game on the freshman team, before playing three years of varsity ball. He started the last two seasons and averaged 11.4 points per game as a junior.
After staying on to serve as an assistant coach for the program, he was promoted to head coach in 1972 at the age of 25. The program experienced an instant turnaround, going from 7-20 the year before to 16-13 in Adams' first season. He would coach FPC for two more seasons, leading the team to a 19-7 record in 1973-74, which stood as the program's all-time winningest season for 25 years.
With Fresno Pacific as the launching pad, Adams' coaching career has taken him across the globe and to the game's highest level. From FPC, he went on to coach collegiately at U.S. International, UC Santa Barbara, Fresno State and UNLV. In 1986 he became the head men's basketball coach at Fresno State, leading the Bulldogs for four seasons before moving on to the NBA.
There, he's had the opportunity to coach some of the best players in the world, including Ray Allen, Kevin Durant, Gary Payton, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson and reigning league MVP Derrick Rose.
He spent last season as an assistant coach for the Chicago Bulls, guiding the team to the Eastern Conference Finals and the best record in the NBA (62-20).
He's held assistant coaching stints with the San Antonio Spurs (1992-94), Philadelphia 76ers (1994-96), Milwaukee Bucks (1998-03), Chicago Bulls (2003-08, 2010-11) and Oklahoma City Thunder (2008-10). He also served as a player personnel-scout for the Portland Trail Blazers (1996-98) and a special assignments scout for the Bulls (2008).
Adams has also coached professional basketball in Belgium and Japan, and consulted and coached with the Canadian national basketball program and Belgian Basketball Federation.
Rafael De Cicco - Men's Soccer (1983-1986)
Presenter - Jaime Ramirez
Originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil, De Cicco came to FPC to in 1983 to join the men's soccer team. Three years later he became the first player in the program's now storied history to earn NAIA 1st team All-American honors. He graduated as the winningest player in the program's history, leading the team to 60 wins in four seasons.
With incredible ball control and deadly finishing ability, De Cicco set a single-season school record that would hold nearly 15 years with a 21-goal season in 1985. His competitive drive and offensive skill-set was exactly what the Sunbirds needed to solidify the program as one of the NAIA's elite.
He immediately made his mark as a freshman, scoring seven goals and assisting on three others. As a sophomore he was more of a distributor, leading the team with seven assists as the Sunbirds made it all the way to the 1984 NAIA National Championship match.
FPC finished as the NAIA National Runner-Up again in 1985, finishing with a record of 19-5-1 behind De Cicco's record-breaking season. He scored five goals during the playoffs that year to take the team the final, where the team came up just short in overtime for the second year in a row.
As a senior he scored 13 goals while leading the team to a 15-5-1 record, which included a 3-0 win over NCAA power Stanford. After the season he was named FPU's Scholar of the Year, given annually to the athlete with the highest GPA.
His 45 career goals now rank fifth all-time and his 15 game-winning goals rank fourth. He's also among FPU all-time leaders in points with 106 (5th) and assists with 16 (12th).
Lin Gao - Volleyball (1999-2003)
Presenter - Dennis Janzen
An icon in her native China, Lin Gao had played at the highest level, representing her homeland in the Olympic Games before coming to FPU in 1999. Despite having to adjust to a completely new culture and language, Gao embraced the Sunbirds' system and her American teammates. What resulted was nothing short of exceptional.
A four-time NAIA 1st Team All-American and two-time GSAC player of the year, Gao is among FPU's all-time leaders in nearly every statistical category. She capped off her career by earning national tournament MVP honors in 2003 while leading the school to its second ever national title.
In her first year with the team she had 27 matches with double figure kills and digs, leading the Sunbirds with 530 kills and a .400 attack percentage as the team finished as the NAIA National Runner-Up. After a redshirt season, she came back as a sophomore in 2001 to lead the team to a 35-4 record and an NAIA Final Four appearance.
That year she led the team with 468 kills and 469 digs, while posting 38 solo blocks (the third-best single-season mark in FPU history). As a junior she smashed 502 kills and had 464 digs while leading the Sunbirds to an incredible 41-2 record, a perfect 20-0 run through their tough GSAC schedule and another NAIA Final Four Appearance.
In 2003, her final year with the team, Gao and the Sunbirds would capture the national title that had been eluding them for the first three years of her career. Once again leading the team in kills (463) and digs (485), Gao helped the Sunbirds finish 42-2 and defeat Columbia 3-1 to win the 2003 national championship.
To this day, she is Fresno Pacific's all-time leader in kills with 1,963, attempts with 4,378, and is second all-time in digs with 1,922. In 490 career sets (4th all-time), Gao had more than 100 matches with double-figure kills.
Her career .375 attack percentage ranks seventh all-time, as does her career 4.01 kills per set. Her career average of 3.92 digs per set is fifth in Sunbirds' history.
Dennis Janzen (coach) – Volleyball (1983-2010)
Presenter - Tom Read
Dennis Janzen's contributions to Fresno Pacific Athletics have been innumerable both as a coach and an administrator.
A native of Reedley, Janzen took over as the head coach of both the volleyball and women's basketball teams in 1983, laying the groundwork for both programs to become highly successful.
In four seasons as the head women's basketball coach, Janzen took the program from its first year of NAIA competition to a GSAC championship (1987), along with the program's first national ranking and berth in the NAIA National Tournament (“Sweet 16” finish). He oversaw the program's first ever All-Americans and Scholar Athletes, and posted a 28-3 record in his final season, still a best in program history.
Janzen's responsibilities shifted solely to volleyball in 1988. The program had done well under his direction, with a winning record every year and a GSAC title in 1986, but had yet to reach their goal of an NAIA Tournament appearance.
The team's opportunity finally came in 1989. In their first appearance at the national tournament, Janzen and the Sunbirds ran the table, taking home the title that year for the university's first ever team national championship.
By the end of his FPU coaching career, Janzen had guided the Sunbirds to 26 consecutive winning seasons and had turned the Sunbirds into the NAIA's dominant volleyball power. Janzen and the Sunbirds captured their sixth national title, and fourth in a row, last season, capping off a 10-year run which saw FPU become the winningest college volleyball team at any level (373-18 in that span).
The long list of accomplishments includes 17 Golden State Athletic Conference championships, 13 national “Final Four” finishes and two national runner-up finishes to go with the six NAIA national championships (1989, 2003, four-straight from 2007-2010) and a career record of 867-168.
Under Janzen's guidance, Sunbird volleyball has produced 92 All-GSAC players, 64 NAIA All-Americans (34 First-Team), 26 NAIA Scholar-Athletes, 11 GSAC Players of the Year and three NAIA National Players of the Year, all while graduating his players at a rate of more than 95 percent.
His last 20 teams, 1989 through 2010 (excluding 1992 and 1993 when he was on study leave), all appeared in the NAIA national championship tournament, a national tournament record. He has the third highest winning percentage in NAIA volleyball history, is the winningest volleyball coach in GSAC history, and is the winningest coach in GSAC history in any sport.
Other accomplishments during his tenure included guiding the team to a 122-match home winning streak that stretched from 2002-2010. At one point in 2010 the Sunbirds had the longest win streak in the country at any level with 65 straight matches. FPU also had streaks of 69 straight wins against GSAC teams (the consensus top NAIA conference in the country) and an incredible 91-match regular season winning streak from 2007-2010.
Fresno Pacific volleyball has won 11 consecutive GSAC titles and gone 322-32 in conference play, the best winning percentage of any team in the history of any GSAC sport. An 11-time GSAC coach of the year and four-time AVCA-NAIA coach of the year, Janzen's success has not been limited to the Sunbirds. From 1992-94 he assisted in the development and training of the USA Men's Volleyball Olympic Team.
He also served as an assistant coach with the men's programs at Penn State and the University of Southern California, going on to earn a PhD in Sports Psychology from USC in 2004. That same year he became FPU's Director of Athletics.
Since 2004, Janzen has overseen the creation of seven new sports resulting in major enrollment, community awareness and positive university brand impact. He's helped Fresno Pacific turn into one of the premier college athletic programs of its size, with top-five finishes in the NACDA Director's Cup in each of the last four years, and most recently was the driving force behind FPU's application and acceptance into the NCAA membership process.
Janzen was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Fresno Athletic Hall of Fame in 2010.
Randy Pfost - Men's Basketball (1970-1974)
Presenters - Wayne Wiebe & Ken Wall
One of the most talented players to ever don a Vikings (or Sunbirds) uniform, Randy Pfost came to Fresno Pacific in 1970 after an injury-riddled career at McLane High School which had limited him to just one season of play.
The potential for greatness was evident early on for the 6'8” center. After one season on the freshman team, Pfost enjoyed a breakout sophomore year which saw him win team MVP, lead the team in scoring (13.2 ppg) and rebounding (12 rpg), and set a school record of 23 rebounds in one game.
A rebounding machine, his 957 career rebounds over three seasons make him the program's all-time leading rebounder, with nearly 200 more than the next player on the list. He recorded more than 300 rebounds in a season three different times and is also the school's all-time leader in blocked shots (238).
In his junior season, he helped the team experience a major turnaround going from 7-20 the year before to 16-13. Once again, Pfost led the team in scoring (15.5 ppg) and rebounding (10.4 ppg) while continuing to establish himself as one of the best defensive post players in the NAIA.
The next year he took the team to new heights with a 19-7 record and a .730 win percentage that would stand as the program's winningest team until 2009. Pfost averaged 12 points per game and led the team with 12.4 rebounds per game, earned NAIA Honorable Mention All-American honors (a first ever for the program) and set a school record that still stands today with 92 blocked shots in a season.
In addition to being the all-time leader in career rebounds and blocks, Pfost is still among the program's top-five all-time leaders in steals (132, 3rd), field goals made (495, 4th) and field goal percentage (.551, 4th). He is the program's all-time leader in two-point field goals (495) and his 1,146 career points rank ninth all-time.
