Big Haul of Honors Ahead for Wheeling Basketball Star Ashley Wilson in 2025
Star of 2009 Third-Place Team Going into IBCA, Wheeling Halls of Fame; Look at all IBCA Hall of Fame Inductees with MSL Ties
Ashley Wilson is going to have a Hall of a year in 2025.
Wilson will be the first basketball player from Wheeling - boys or girls - to be inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association (IBCA) Hall of Fame on May 3, 2025. She is part of the Class of 2025 that was announced by the IBCA on Monday, December 2.
And Wilson will be inducted into the Wheeling Athletic Hall of Fame in the Class of 2025 with longtime track and cross country coach Tim Falconer, baseball star Brendan Spillane and baseball and hockey star Mike Rucinski. That induction ceremony will take place on January 25.
Wilson set the program’s career records for points (1,916) and rebounds (1,127) during a four-year career where the Wildcats posted a record of 112-17 under coach Shelly Weigel. They finished third in the state in Class 4A in her senior year as she finished second in the Illinois Ms. Basketball voting and was a first-team all-state selection as she averaged 18.4 points, 12.6 rebounds, 3.3 steals and 3.1 assists a game..
Wheeling also won the first two of three consecutive Mid-Suburban League titles with Wilson in the lineup. She was all-MSL and all-area all four years and was a second-team all-state pick as a sophomore and junior. Wilson played two years at Purdue and two years at Hannibal-LaGrange University in Missouri.
Some of the other notable inductees include a pair of girls basketball stars in Maine West’s Dawn Vana and Warren’s Sarah Boothe. Vana was a two-time Daily Herald All-Area captain who played at Illinois and Boothe was a three-time Herald All-Area captain who played at Stanford.
Galesburg’s Joey Range was a star on the 1998 Class AA runnerup that edged Maine West and Lucas Johnson and Kevin Frey in the semifinals in Peoria. Frank Williams was a big part of Peoria Manual’s Class AA title four-peat from 1994-97 and he went on to star at Illinois.
Some notable coaches included Benet’s Gene Heidkamp, Loyola’s Tom Livatino, Illinois Wesleyan’s Ron Rose and Champaign Centennial’s Tim Lavin. Lavin won a state title at Centennial and was a starting guard on York’s 1982 AA supersectional team. Longtime sportswriter Bill Kindt is best known for his work with the Elgin Courier, Aurora Beacon News and Suburban Trib but he also covered high school sports for the Daily Herald in the early ‘80s.
But there were three names from deep in state history who are being inducted in Peoria’s Lynch Conway, Chicago Calumet’s Tony Hinkle and Antioch’s Dale Barnstable. Conway was the star of the first state tourney in 1908 as he led Peoria High to a title by scoring 22 points, which was a championship-game record for 42 years. Hinkle is best-known in Indiana for his coaching at Butler University and what is now historic Hinkle Fieldhouse, where the movie Hoosiers was filmed, but he was a star at Calumet before graduating in 1917 and at the University of Chicago.
I was not aware that Barnstable was an all-state basketball, football and track and field athlete at Antioch, where he was inducted into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame in 1996. After graduating, Barnstable served three years in World War II and then went to Kentucky to play for Adolph Rupp. Barnstable was a reserve on the first NCAA championship team in 1948, started on the repeat champion in 1949 and was an alternate on the US Olympic team in 1948.
MSL’s IBCA Hall of Famers
The lists of the IBCA Hall of Famers from the MSL are in alphabetical order and the information comes from the IBCA’s Basketball Museum of Illinois website. Inductees include those with some ties to the MSL as noted after their primary school and induction year. Media include those who regularly covered the MSL or were from the area. Officials are those who worked MSL games and/or were from that area (thanks to Fred Allman for assistance there). Two Maine West inductees - Gaston Freeman and Jim Smith - were at the school when it was in the MSL.
If there are any omissions please let me know at marty.maciaszek@gmail.com. FYI - there may be some people you are looking for but have not been inducted yet. Most of the inductee biographies can be found at https://basketballmuseumofillinois.com/hall-of-fame/.