VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

Photo Credit- Shane Corrow

David Hakins Inductee

Williston/Newport

Inducted 2019

The 2019 David Hakins Inductee for exceptional promotion and development of sports and athletics in Vermont, Mal Boright was an award-winning journalist covering and promoting all sports at all levels throughout the state for over five decades. Like Hakins, he was a founder of the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame in 2011. He passed away at age 81 in 2016.

A journalist for over 50 years in all parts of Vermont in print, radio and television, Mal worked as a sportswriter and or news writer at the Newport Express, Rutland Herald, Valley News, Burlington Free Press (both sports and news). He worked as the sports director at WVNY-TV- one of the stations original sportscasters- and also called UVM basketball and hockey in the late 1960s for the station. Among the many sports he covered as a journalist, he was an expert on Vermont and New England stock car racing. 

 Since 2004, he was the sports writer and a political columnist for the Williston Observer. He was very popular with the Champlain Valley Union High School athletics staff and the CVU student-athletes.  

 For close to 30 years he was a contributor for WDEV Radio Vermont hosting the popular show, 'The Swami' and was the co-host of 'The Kid and the Geezer' show. 

 Mal was a former president of the Vermont Press Association and active with the Vermont Sports Media Association, formerly the Vermont Sportswriters and Sports casters Association (VSSA). He was active with the VSSA and VSMA as a nominative and voter for athletes of the month and its athletes of the year awards.  

While at the Newport Express, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association named him the Vermont Sportswriter of the Year for 1967. He also was elected to the Vermont Principals Association Hall of Fame in 2012 and was a 2014 inductee into the Orleans-Northern Essex County (NEK) Athletics Hall of Fame.  He was honored several times for his sports journalism by the Vermont Press Association. 

 He was one of the founders of the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame in 2011 and an original member of its board of directors.  Until his death, he was a key member of the VSHOF's nominating advisory committee. In his honor in 2017, the board decided that any members of the media inducted in the VSHOF would be named the 'Mal Boright Inductee'. 

After playing baseball and basketball at Newport High School, he served as a medic in the U.S. Air Force from 1953 to 1957. He studied at the University of Maryland, the U.S. Armed Forces Institute and Nathaniel Hawthorne College.

An avid basketball player for many, many years, he played for the Border Bandits adult league teams, and played in several U.S. Senior Basketball Olympics in its 3-on-3 tournaments. He also coached basketball at the former Sacred Heart High School in Newport and at Colchester High School. He also officiated basketball and participated at the Boston Red Sox fantasy baseball camp in Florida.