John Beilein headlines the seven-member 2026 class of the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame, announced Friday by athletics director Wren Baker. The group lifts the total inductees to 250 and will be honored October 10 before the Mountaineers host Arizona at Milan Puskar Stadium.
The class reaches back to the 1970s and forward to Olympic medals, tying together coaches and athletes who pushed WVU programs into national contention and carried Mountaineer credentials onto bigger stages.
Seven Names Across Five Sports
The 36th class of the WVU Sports Hall of Fame mixes two basketball figures, a pair of women’s soccer stars, a linebacker, a distance runner and the winningest wrestling coach in school history.
| Inductee | Sport | Years | Signature mark |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Beilein | Men’s basketball coach | 2003-07 | 2005 Elite Eight, 2007 NIT title |
| Kadeisha Buchanan | Women’s soccer | 2013-16 | 2016 MAC Hermann Trophy |
| Dennis Fowlkes | Football | 1979-82 | 459 career tackles |
| Bria Holmes | Women’s basketball | 2013-16 | 2,001 points, 11th WNBA pick |
| Alex Kasich | Cross country / track | 1972-76 | All-America, pro racing pioneer |
| Ashley Lawrence | Women’s soccer | 2013-16 | Three-time All-America |
| Craig Turnbull | Wrestling coach | 1979-2014 | 287 wins, five national titles |
Induction comes on a Big 12 football Saturday billed as Coal Rush and Hall of Fame weekend. Fans will see the new members introduced prior to kickoff against Arizona.
Five sports, two coaching tenures and three overlapping student-athlete eras sit inside one announcement. The range is the point: the committee did not chase a single moment. It stitched together programs that rose at different speeds and left different kinds of marks.
Beilein Earns Halls on Both Sides of the State Line
Beilein’s four seasons in Morgantown produced a 104-60 record, four straight postseason berths and the program’s first Elite Eight since 1959. The 2005 team knocked off Creighton, Wake Forest and Texas Tech before falling to Louisville in overtime. Two years later the Mountaineers won the NIT at Madison Square Garden, their first title since 1942.
He coached WVU’s first men’s basketball All-American since 1972 in Kevin Pittsnogle and left for Michigan, where he became the winningest coach in school history and reached two national championship games. Career college record: 829-468.
- 754 Division I wins (22nd all-time at announcement)
- 23 seasons of 20-plus wins
- Two Final Four appearances at Michigan (2013, 2018)
- Nine NBA draft picks developed as Wolverines coach
Just four days before the WVU announcement, Michigan named Beilein to its 2026 Athletics Hall of Honor class. He will be inducted September 11 at Crisler Center and recognized the next day at Michigan’s football game. The double honor in the same calendar year fits a career spent building programs at every stop from junior college through the NBA.
On X, longtime WVU observer Bob Hertzel and others noted the mutual goodwill. One fan account wrote that the relationship between Beilein and the school remains strong years after he left.
The sequence itself tells the story. Morgantown first restored March relevance. Ann Arbor then scaled the same habits into Final Fours and draft capital. Two halls in one year simply record both halves of that arc on their own campuses.
The Canadian Pair Who Put WVU Soccer on the Map
Kadeisha Buchanan and Ashley Lawrence arrived together in 2013 and left as the most decorated tandem in program history. Under coach Nikki Izzo-Brown they helped WVU claim seven Big 12 titles, reach the 2016 College Cup final as national runner-up, and sit at No. 1 in the polls for eight weeks.
Buchanan, a center back from Brampton, Ontario, swept the major individual awards in 2016: MAC Hermann Trophy, Honda Cup for soccer, espnW and TopDrawerSoccer Player of the Year. She is the only Mountaineer with All-America honors in all four seasons and a four-time Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year. The back line posted 55 shutouts and allowed 62 goals across her 91 matches.
Lawrence, the Toronto midfielder, earned three All-America nods and finished with 29 career assists, third in school history. She was Big 12 Championship Most Outstanding Offensive Player in 2016 and a two-time MAC Hermann semifinalist.
Both started for Canada at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where the team took bronze. They later added Canada Olympic bronze in Rio and gold in Tokyo. Lawrence has appeared in three World Cups and three Olympics. Buchanan has won multiple Canadian Player of the Year awards and continues at Chelsea in the Women’s Super League after a stint at Lyon.
Fans immediately flagged the joint induction as fitting. One reply on X called the entire class “awesome” and singled out the two soccer stars and Bria Holmes alongside the coaches. Their college success created a lasting Canadian pipeline that still shapes recruiting and national-team pathways for WVU.
The numbers explain why the pipeline held. Four-year All-America status on the back line and a top-three assists total in midfield gave later Canadian prospects a concrete template. College Cup finalist, eight weeks at No. 1, then Olympic medals: the path from Morgantown to the national team stopped looking like an exception.
Linebacker, Scorer, Runner and the Wrestling Architect
Dennis Fowlkes stacked 459 tackles from 1979-82, second in solo stops and third overall in school history. Recruited by Nick Saban and coached by Frank Cignetti Sr. and Don Nehlen, he paired with Darryl Talley to form one of WVU’s best linebacker duos. He logged 16 solo tackles against Virginia Tech, played in the 1981 Peach Bowl win over Florida and the 1982 Gator Bowl, then spent four NFL seasons with Minnesota and Miami.
Bria Holmes scored 2,001 points from 2013-16, one of only four Mountaineer women to clear 2,000. The New Haven guard averaged 16.8 points as a senior, earned three straight unanimous All-Big 12 first-team honors and went 11th overall to the Atlanta Dream, then the highest WNBA pick in school history. She played five professional seasons.
Alex Kasich earned All-America honors with a 16th-place finish at the 1975 NCAA Cross Country Championships after placing 153rd the year before. He set school records in the indoor 2-mile and 3-mile and outdoor 3-mile and 6-mile. After WVU he became a top American road racer, finishing ninth at the 1981 New York City Marathon. His open acceptance of prize money forced TAC (now USATF) to rewrite amateur rules within a month, helping turn road racing professional.
Craig Turnbull coached wrestling from 1979 to 2014 and left with 287 dual wins, three national champions who won five titles, 26 All-America honors and a program-best sixth-place NCAA finish in 1991. He pushed for the WVU Wrestling Pavilion opened in 2006 and has been inducted into multiple halls of fame. Five of his former wrestlers already sit in the WVU Sports Hall of Fame.
Serious headline class for WVU’s Hall of Fame this year. John Beilein’s induction will deservedly draw the headlines but names like Dennis Fowlkes and Alex Kasich are a long time coming. Kadeisha Buchanan and Ashley Lawrence going in together is only fitting.
Daniel Woods, WV MetroNews sports anchor, wrote that assessment the day of the announcement. It captured the balance many fans felt: star power up front, overdue recognition deeper in the roster.
Four different sports, four different kinds of permanence:
- Fowlkes left tackle totals that still rank near the top of the record book.
- Holmes crossed the 2,000-point line and reset the WNBA draft ceiling for WVU women.
- Kasich turned a jump from 153rd to 16th at the NCAA meet into a professional road-racing career that rewrote amateur rules.
- Turnbull spent 35 seasons building dual wins, national champions and a dedicated pavilion.
Eligibility Rules and the October Ceremony
Candidates become eligible ten years after completing their WVU careers. Coaches or administrators with 20 years of service gain immediate eligibility upon retirement. Selection requires 75 percent support from a 12-member committee appointed by the athletics director. A seniors subcommittee and a non-athlete subcommittee protect older and coaching candidates from being crowded out by recent stars.
The Hall itself began in 1991. The full WVU Sports Hall of Fame roster now stands at 250 after this class. Ceremonies take place on the field before the Arizona game, giving the new members a full stadium audience on a Saturday already marked for special recognition.
Beilein’s dual 2026 halls, the soccer pair’s Olympic medals, Turnbull’s three-and-a-half decades and the statistical piles left by Fowlkes, Holmes and Kasich form a single through-line. Each generation of Mountaineers expanded what the next one could attempt. On October 10 the university will put all seven of those expansions on the same stage.
How This Class Spans Four Decades
The seven resumes do not cluster in one era. They form a chain of arrival and departure dates that runs from the early 1970s into the mid-2010s, with coaching tenures bridging the gaps.
- 1972-76 – Alex Kasich competes in cross country and track, earns All-America honors and later forces a rewrite of amateur road-racing rules.
- 1979-82 – Dennis Fowlkes posts 459 tackles and plays in the Peach and Gator Bowls under coaches who include Nick Saban, Frank Cignetti Sr. and Don Nehlen.
- 1979-2014 – Craig Turnbull builds 287 dual wins, five national titles by three champions and the Wrestling Pavilion that opened in 2006.
- 2003-07 – John Beilein goes 104-60, reaches the Elite Eight and wins the NIT before departing for Michigan.
- 2013-16 – Kadeisha Buchanan, Ashley Lawrence and Bria Holmes overlap as soccer and basketball stars, collecting national awards, a College Cup final and a top WNBA pick.
That spread is why the class feels broad rather than thematic. A distance runner who helped professionalize his sport shares the stage with Olympic medalists who finished college only a decade ago. The subcommittees exist for precisely this mix: older names and coaching careers stay visible beside recent stars who already clear the ten-year wait.
What Shared Stages Mean for the Hall
October 10 folds the induction into a Big 12 football Saturday already branded Coal Rush and Hall of Fame weekend. The new members walk onto the field at Milan Puskar Stadium before kickoff against Arizona, in front of a crowd that came for a conference game and stays for the introductions.
The calendar also compresses Beilein’s two halls into a single fall. Michigan inducts him September 11 at Crisler Center and recognizes him the next day at its football game. WVU follows a month later. Fans who tracked both stops can mark both ceremonies without waiting another year.
Joint recognition carries its own logic for Buchanan and Lawrence. They arrived together, won Big 12 titles together, reached a College Cup final together and took Olympic bronze together while still students. Putting them in the same class simply mirrors the way their careers already ran in parallel.
For Fowlkes, Kasich and Turnbull the date supplies a different kind of weight. Their peaks came earlier. A full stadium on a branded weekend gives those longer-gestating cases the same public stage the headline names receive. The through-line holds: every generation widened the map. The ceremony puts the maps side by side.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where is the 2026 WVU Sports Hall of Fame induction?
The ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, October 10, 2026, prior to the West Virginia-Arizona football game at Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown. The day is also listed as Coal Rush and Hall of Fame weekend on the official football schedule.
How many people are in the WVU Sports Hall of Fame after this class?
The seven new members bring the all-time total to exactly 250. The Hall was founded in 1991 and this is its 36th class.
What is the waiting period for WVU Hall of Fame eligibility?
Athletes must wait ten years after their final season of competition. Coaches and administrators who retire with at least twenty years of service to the athletic department become eligible immediately.
Did Kadeisha Buchanan and Ashley Lawrence win Olympic medals with Canada?
Yes. Both earned bronze with Canada at the 2016 Rio Olympics while still WVU students. They later won gold together at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (held in 2021). Both have also competed in multiple FIFA Women’s World Cups.
What are John Beilein’s key coaching numbers at West Virginia?
Beilein went 104-60 in four seasons (2003-07), reached the 2005 NCAA Elite Eight, made consecutive Sweet 16s, won the 2007 NIT championship and produced WVU’s first men’s basketball All-American since 1972.
