By Zeno Jo - IlliniGuys Staff Writer

October 10, 2025

(Cover photo courtesy Zeno Jo/IlliniGuys)

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – On an energy-filled weekend in the 217, the University of Illinois Athletics Department welcomed its 2025 Hall of Fame class. The day before the 21st-ranked Fighting Illini football team welcomes the top team in the country in Ohio State, a class of eleven former coaches and athletes were inducted into the exclusive group and immortalized in Illinois athletics history.

The likes of basketball’s Kiwane Garris (1994-97) and softball’s Meredith Hackett Kindt (2009-12) were open to interviews from the media on Friday afternoon ahead of their induction ceremony later the same evening at State Farm Center. Quarterback Kurt Kittner (1998-2001) led the Illini to the 2001 Big Ten title and finished his collegiate career as the program’s second all-time leading passer. Today, he still ranks second in career completions (682), first in attempts (1,254), and first in touchdown passes (70).

“It was super cool and humbling,” Kittner said, thinking back to when he got the call. “I was walking through the mall with my girls. I think I was on the way to Claire’s or on my way to Putt Shack with them. I told my daughters when we sat down for lunch, I went, “Girls, I’m going to the Hall of Fame,” and the little one was like, ‘Can I go?’ I said, ‘Of course you can.’”

“I think the interesting part is that they weren’t there for it, right? Now they get to be a part of it,” Kittner said, saying the experience has helped him relive his glory days, in a way. “They started asking about my time in college and playing the sport, so it’s cool to have them be a part of it.”

Kittner says the induction came as a shock to him, but that looking back, he would not have wanted his career in Champaign to play out much different (except for one game against the Buckeyes way back when).

“I would tell myself to slide against Ohio State, slide earlier, or throw the ball away,” Kittner laughed, referring to the 24-21 loss to Ohio State in 2000 that saw Kittner leave the game with an apparent head injury. With the exception of that, the Schaumburg, Illinois native says that when people ask him what he’d do differently if he had the chance to go back in time, he says:

“Nothing. I worked my butt off. I did the best that I could, and sometimes that’s not good enough, right? And that fuels you.”

“You could say, ‘Hey, maybe I should have redshirted and I’d have another year,’ No. Struggling my freshman year made me better my sophomore year,” he said. “You learn more when you fail than when you succeed, so I needed a little bit of failure. I had the right coaches at the right time, and I look back at my career here and say I gave everything I had. I couldn’t give any more.”

Another gridiron graduate in this year’s class is Joe Rutgens (1958-60). A first-round pick in both the NFL and AFL drafts in 1961, the Cedar Point, Illinois native was elated at being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

“It was very exciting,” he said. “I’ve been an Illinois fan for years. My two high school coaches both played football here, Jim Valek and Don Smith. Gene Vance, who was inducted as a basketball coach, he was a teacher. I had classes with him. I have a lot of connections with Illinois.”

Vance, who was a basketball player from 1942-43 and 1947, and as the athletics director from 1967-72, is also a member of this year’s class. Looking to the weekend’s football game against the Buckeyes, Rutgens looked to the past.

“They’re tough, but we’ve beaten them before. When I was a junior, I think they were rated like second or third in the country, and we beat them nine to nothing, so it can be done,” Rutgens said with a chuckle.

Rutgens says that the 9-0 win over the Buckeyes in 1959 was his most memorable experience as a player.

“I was voted Sports Illustrated lineman of the week, so I was happy with that,” Rutgens said with a smile. “But of all of our games, I remember I don’t have any great love for Michigan teams. They cost us going to the Rose Bowl my senior year by two plays.”

It was 1960 in Ann Arbor. A digital copy of the game summary shares that it was a cold, cloudy, and snowy day in front of 62,927 in the Big House. The two plays that Rutgens described ended up being costly, and the game ended 8-7 in favor of the Wolverines.

Rutgens recalled: “One was a touchdown where the guy was laying in the endzone and our defensive back knocked the ball down and it fell right in his arms for a touchdown. The other one was a last-minute field goal that we missed. We had to take a five-yard penalty to get our kicker in. It wasn’t a free substitution at that time, and if you didn’t have a timeout, you had to take a penalty. So we took a five-yard penalty, and the ball went underneath the goalpost by about an inch. That five yards cost us a trip to the Rose Bowl.”

Another member of the 2025 class is former women’s basketball head coach Theresa Grentz, who led the program from 1996-2007.

“This honor means so much, because think about it. You come from the East Coast, you have a program, a program that you have to build. And the fact that we could build it with the players, the staff, the fans, the administration to the point that that work would garner a committee’s vote for a Hall of Fame is pretty special,” Grentz said.

Over a 35-year coaching career with stops at St. Joseph’s. Rutgers, Illinois, and Lafayette, Grentz has accumulated a record of 681-362. In 12 years in Champaign, Grentz’s record was 210-156, including the program’s only Big Ten Championship in school history in 1997. Grentz also led the program to the Sweet Sixteen twice and had five NCAA Tournament appearances.

“My greatest joy now is… watching them grow and succeed, and knowing that when they were doing that, I had a little part in that development process,” Grentz said of the program today.

Grentz says the game has changed a lot, and when she lost her husband two years ago, she felt a connection to her former players that she thinks is hard to come by in the modern age of college sports. She recalled that her first team captain at Illinois invited her to golf for three days in Ireland, and that a few months later, one of her first centers invited her to do the same in North Carolina.

“They called and they looked after me. Those relationships – today with the game being so different with the transfer portal being what it is – I don’t know that they’ll have those relationships,” Grentz said. “Wins and losses are there, that’s great, but I think the biggest thing, if I could look back, is the relationships.”

Grentz had high praise for head coach Shauna Green, too.

“I love what she’s doing, and I’ve always said, ‘If there’s a nominee to be president of the Shauna Green fan club, I’m it,’” she said, smiling. “I just love what she’s doing. If there’s anything that I can do for her, which I don’t think is much, to support her, I will. To know that she’s going forward with this and how she’s doing it, I think it’s fabulous.”

At 73, Grentz says that people ask her all the time if she misses coaching, and that the answer is always a hard no. She did, however, say that there was one thing she missed from her days coaching in Champaign.

“Being able to go around the campus yesterday, what did I miss? The campus life,” she said. “That’s what I really miss. It’s just active. It’s alive. It’s moving. That’s what I miss. It’s a campus town, I always loved that, and I missed that.”

The Hall of Fame Class of 2025 is also joined by Aspen Burkett, track & field (1995-98), Mike Durkin, track & field (1972-75), Jane Fauntz Manske, swim & dive (1930-34), Benita Kelley Babridge, track & field (1995-98), and Scott Spiezio, baseball (1991-93). The class will be honored at halftime of tomorrow’s game, a game that Kittner favors his squad to win.

“High scoring game, I’m gonna say 31-28 Illinois,” he said.