Media

Sam Rickelman

Year Inducted: 1991

Category: Media

Schools / Organizations: 
Effingham Daily News

Biography:  Sam Rickelman has spent nearly 2,000 nights away from home covering boys and girls basketball for the Effingham Daily News.  He began sports writing in 1954 and has served the Daily News for more than 20 years. He covered 31 boys’ teams and 21 girls’ teams at the Daily News. Only in his final years did he have an assistant, who found it difficult to realize how Rickelman did it all alone for so many years. Rickelman’s type of dedication cannot easily be measured. He seldom forgot a player and followed them through college and later life. At the time of his retirement, then Daily News managing editor Tim Zgonia said of Rickelman: “The name Sam Rickelman is synonymous with sports in East Central Illinois.  Sam is an institution who transcends the sports he covers.  When I think of the thousands of accounts he brought our readers over the years, I believe we are truly fortunate to have enjoyed the caliber of sports journalism Sam Rickelman has engendered over the years.”

Sam Rickelman died on April 19, 2016 at the age of 75.