BLANCHARDVILLE —  Pecatonica High School’s Athletic Hall of Fame will have some familiar faces join other former Vikings in school lore.

Jim Strommen, Chuck Meyer, Alfred Zimmerman, Bill Hardymanm and Jerry Whitford will all enter as individuals, and the 1970 Hollandale varsity baseball team will join them. 

The 1970 team won the Kickapoo Valley Conference championship and finished the season 6-1 in league play and 9-4 overall. The squad produced five all-conference players, including three first-team selections. The team was coached by former minor leaguer Randy Postal, who focused practices on defense and base running. The baseball team was the last — and possibly only — Hollandale program to win a conference title. Hollandale later joined Blanchardville to make Pecatonica High School.

Strommen was a 1972 graduate. He starred in baseball, basketball and football. He was the school’s athletic director for 31 years before retiring in 2019. He started the Pecatonica Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015. Strommen has been the baseball coach for 45 years and is the state’s second all-time leader in wins. He was also the head football coach for 24 seasons, winning 16 conference championships and was a state runner-up in 2004. He is a member of the Wisconsin Football Coaches (2004) and Baseball Coaches (2004) Halls of Fame, as well as the Madison Area Technical College Hall of Fame (1988), the Southwest Wisconsin Fast Pitch Hall of Fame (2025). 

Meyer taught at various levels in the Pecatonica school district. He was an assistant football coach for 16 seasons, the head wrestling coach for 21 seasons, winning 10 conference championships, two sectional titles and guiding 29 individual state qualifiers. Meyer also had success in softball, a sport which he helped start at the school and coaching from 1984-2017. He won eight conference championships and the 1993 state championship.

Meyer, Strommen and Brian Smith were known as the original “3 C’s”.

Zimmerman was a 1962 Blanchardville graduate. He helped guide the Blanchardville Eagles to three State Line League Football Championships, three baseball championships and one basketball championship. He played all three sports each year in high school, and was a member of the track team for a season. In 1961, the football team was unbeaten. In basketball that year, Pecatonica lost just twice.

After high school he was a longtime Home Talent League All-Star in baseball, and a fast pitch softball star, playing with the Swiss Lanes Team in New Glarus.

Hardyman was a 1960 Blanchardville graduate. He was a four-year letterwinner in football, basketball, baseball, volleyball and track. He graduated from UW-Whitewater, served in the U.S. Army, and was the regional sales manager at ING, ranking in the top three in the country nine times. Since retiring at age 54, he splits his time between homes in Florida and on a golf course in Red Wing, Minnesota in the summer.

Jerry Whitford was a 1954 Hollandale graduate. He letter four years in baseball, three in football and one in basketball. He played baseball at Ripon College and served in the U.S. Army, making the baseball team of 25 players. He later played 23 years of Home Talent League baseball.