Photo gallery: 100 days of sports

Vance Johnson, a Cholla High School graduate, won an NCAA championship in the long jump and went on to play on three Super Bowl teams. As an Arizona Wildcats freshman, he started four games at tailback in 1981. The following season, he earned All-Pac-10 first-team honors.

Born without a right leg, Anthony Robles was a three-time All-American and NCAA champion wrestler at Arizona State. He won the NCAA championship at 125 pounds in March in Philadelphia. As the top seed, Robles defeated defending champion Matt McDonough of Iowa 7-1, giving ASU its first individual wrestling champion since 2003.

Jeff Seaquist and his father, Gerry, were a team. Jeff arrived in 1984 to coach the Phoenix Xavier College Prep girls swim team and added his dad one year later. They were co-head coaches. But for fun, they rotated the coaching title every season for a while.

Bob Horner was picked No. 1 overall in the 1978 major-league baseball draft. Ten days later, he was playing third base for the Atlanta Braves and, in his first game, hitting a home run off Bert Blyleven. Horner, who never played in the minors, was National League Rookie of the Year.

Erwin "Win" Young was a six-time All-American at Indiana University, won a bronze diving medal in the 1968 Olympics and coached the Arizona Wildcats.

In the span of a decade, Bill Lenoir lived a lifetime's worth of tennis, becoming probably the best men's tennis player in the history of both Tucson and the Arizona Wildcats.

Hayzel B. Daniels' football accomplishments are no match for those later in life. That doesn't make what he did as a Tucson High School star any less impressive.

Since 1990, Yavapai College and Mike Pantalione can claim seven men's soccer national championships and 13 title-game appearances.

The state's most dominant high school football program no longer exists. Phoenix Union High School was credited with 25 state championships before being closed in 1982.

Marilyn Ramenofsky earned a silver medal at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in the 400-meter freestyle. The Phoenix Central High School graduate had the fastest qualifying time and had set the world record in the 400 three times in the months leading up to the Olympics.

A Tucson High School graduate, Jim Grabb captured two Grand Slam doubles events, winning the 1989 French Open with Patrick McEnroe and the 1992 U.S. Open with Richey Reneberg.

Before he was winning PGA tournaments, Billy Mayfair was the definition of a golf prodigy. At 15, Mayfair was labeled "golf's junior hotshot."

In December 1982, Louie Espinoza fought Ashby Dancy in Tucson in his second career professional fight. Less than a year and six matches later, Espinoza was at the mecca - Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, fighting Manny Juarez in his first big-time match.

Gary Hall Jr. was born to be an Olympian. Hall, who was born in Cincinnati but moved to Phoenix at a young age, is the son of Gary Hall Sr., who swam in three Olympics, and the nephew of Charles Keating III, who swam in the 1976 Olympics.

It started the first game of the 1994 season. After losing to Show Low in the 1993 state semifinals, Lakeside Blue Ridge played Sunnyside in the '94 season opener and beat the Blue Devils 61-0. Blue Ridge didn't lose again until the 1998 state championship game to Payson.

Kerri Strug's opinion of her own gymnastics career before the 1996 Summer Olympics wasn't favorable. "I was always second fiddle," Strug told Sports Illustrated in 1997. "If they took two girls to the finals, I was third. If they took three, I was fourth."

In celebration of Arizona's centennial, the Star will feature our picks for the 100 best athletes, moments and teams.

Hank Leiber, who was born in Phoenix in 1911, attended the University of Arizona as a three-sport athlete, to play football, basketball and baseball. He finally settled on baseball and was a star pitcher. He was inducted into the UA’s Hall of Fame in 1977.

Andy Livingston didn't want to listen to the rules. He knew he could play in the NFL. With his big brother, Warren, a UA graduate, already in the league with the Dallas Cowboys, Andy knew he had talent to play at the highest level.

Henry Carr was a true champion on the track. As a standout at Northwestern High School in Detroit, Carr won several state championships. State titles turned to national titles when Carr went to Arizona State to run in college.

Michele Mitchell, born in Scottsdale and a Phoenix Arcadia graduate, was a star for the Arizona Wildcats and won a Olympic silver medals in diving's 10-meter platform event in 1984 in Los Angeles and 1988 in Seoul, South Korea.

Of all the classic Arizona-ASU sports matchups, few can rival the one produced during the 1976 baseball season. En route to the UA's first national championship in any sport, the Wildcats finally beat the powerful Sun Devils when it mattered most - in a College World Series elimination game.