Click here to see our online walk of fame

The Wisconsin Center District built and maintains the Wisconsin Athletic Walk of Fame as a place of honor commemorating Wisconsin's foremost sports figures - not only famous athletic heroes, but others who made other important contributions to the world of sports and to Wisconsin's stature in athletics.

The Walk of Fame honors athletic achievement and glory, but is also about the important values intrinsic to sports - things like teamwork, fair play, leadership, fitness and perseverance. The people enshrined in the Walk of Fame include accomplished competitors such as Henry Aaron and Sidney Moncrief, leaders like the legendary coaches Vince Lombardi and Al McGuire, renowned announcers from Earl Gillespie to Bob Uecker, and visionary sports philanthropists like Jane and Lloyd Pettit.

The Milwaukee Arena had just opened in 1950 and was the premier indoor athletic facility in the entire state and one of the most modern in the nation. The Milwaukee Arena and Auditorium Board launched the Hall of Fame in 1951 with fourteen members, and administered the program and hosted biennial induction dinners for many years. For most of the next half-century, the original plaques and those of later inductees were displayed in the Arena and MECCA Convention Center.

By the time the new Wisconsin Center District (WCD) acquired MECCA in 1995, the facility had just about run out of room for new plaques, and the Hall of Fame program was being administered by the Wisconsin Sports Authority (now the Wisconsin Sports Development Corporation). In 2001 we decided to bring them outdoors where everyone could see them, and built the "Walk of Fame" promenade on Fourth Street, alongside the U.S. Cellular Arena. Together with the Wisconsin Sports Development Corporation, WCD opened and dedicated the Walk of Fame on November, 29, 2001, with five new inductees, bringing the total then to 114 Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame members.

We located the Walk of Fame so it could be easily enjoyed by sports fans on their way to and from events both in our facilities and at the Bradley Center. We invite you to stroll through anytime you're downtown, and hope you'll gain something from your visit. With so many plaques and new inductees added every two years, there's more than enough to see over several stops, so we hope you'll be back many times and bring friends, relatives, visitors, children and others to learn about the people who made sports history in Wisconsin.

* * * * * * * * * *

When the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame was revitailized in the early 1990s under the auspices of  the Wisconsin Sports Authority (now the Wisconsin Sports Development Corporation), Joe Sweeney was the man primarily responsible for drumming up interest and recruiting donors and volunteers to get the program back on track and launch the first induction ceremony in years. Joe has a critcially-acclaimed new book out called Networking Is A Contact Sport.