I’ve always felt Mary Burke holds a special place in the history of the R.I. Interscholastic League, so it was satisfying to see that she has been named one of the 12 individuals who will be inducted into the league’s Hall of Fame in the spring.

Part of it, of course, is that she was a great multi-sport athlete in the early days of the league’s girls sports programs.

When Burke was earning All-State honors in basketball and volleyball at Toll Gate High in the early 1980s, the Interscholastic League’s girls sports program still was in its first decade of full operation.

In 1983 she was named Rhode Island’s high school girls Athlete of the Year by the state’s association of sports media members. She was one of the first Rhode Island female high school basketball players to attract the attention of women’s college coaches from outside New England, so it probably wasn’t surprising that she went on to become a three-time Big East all-conference selection at Providence College. In one game in her senior season, she scored 43 points and was named the1987 Rhode Island Female Athlete of the Year.

She went into college coaching after graduating from Providence and spent a few years as both the Bryant (College) University head women’s volleyball coach and assistant women’s basketball coach before being named the college’s women’s head basketball coach in 1989. In 17 years as the Lady Bulldogs head coach, her teams had won 246 games going into this season.

She is one of the best athletic success stories of any of the Interscholastic League’s female graduates, but her story was always about so much more than just field goals and free throws.

She was one of Rhode Island’s early examples of what sports can do for a young girl, beyond just giving them a chance to wear a uniform and experience the thrill of victory.

When she was in the third grade it was discovered that she was dyslexic. Rather than going to her neighborhood elementary school in Warwick, she took a little bus every day to another Warwick school for special classes. It became a childhood of snide remarks and the other kids looking at her differently, even after she was mainstreamed into a general classroom in junior high school.

That ostracism can be devastating to a child’s self-esteem, but timing was in Burke’s favor. She was in the first wave of girls to come along following the passage of Title IX in 1972, providing equal opportunities for girl athletes. So when a junior high school teacher suggested she try playing basketball, she did, and almost immediately it was something she could do well. By the time she reached high school she had become an outstanding athlete.

“Sports gave me an identity,” Burke said yesterday. “It provided an opportunity for me to develop self-confidence.”

Fortunately, she also had good people around her at Toll Gate, people who didn’t let her get lost in the celebrated status of a high school sports star. They were people who reminded her that though colleges were offering basketball scholarships to girls because of Title IX, you can’t go to college unless you do the work in the classroom.

So Burke focused on both her athletic and academic responsibilities. When she graduated from Toll Gate, she had the grades and SAT scores necessary for college admission. She then went on to graduate from Providence College in four years and in her senior year of 1987 she was named the first female recipient of the NCAA National Award of Valor.

Now, during a two-decade coaching career, she has been watching young women reap the benefits of athletics.

There are the college athletic scholarships for a selective few; opportunities to attend college that might not have been there if they weren’t athletes.

But it has been more than just the star athletes. She has seen girls and young women with all levels of athletic talent use sports participation to help develop self-confidence that carries on to aspects of life beyond the basketball court.

“It opens doors in so many ways,” Burke said about female sports participation.

So on May 6, she will join the 11 other outstanding individuals at the league’s annual Hall of Fame induction dinner at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick.

It’s definitely an illustrious class.

In addition to Burke, five other individuals will be honored for their performances as high school athletes and sports accomplishments beyond the interscholastic level.

Bill Almon, the 1971 Providence Journal Honor Roll Boy, was a star baseball player at Warwick. He then went on to become the No. 1 pick in the 1974 Major League Entry Draft during his second year at Brown and play 15 years in the big leagues.

Charlie Ajootian was a state, New England and national high school shot put champion as a Classical student in the early 1960s.

Mike Stenhouse was named the 1976 Journal Honor Roll Boy after an outstanding multi-sports career at Cranston East, especially on the baseball field. He went on to play at Harvard and then spent nearly a decade playing professional baseball.

Christina Batastini’s career as a basketball and track star at Classical High earned her selection as the 1996 Journal Honor Roll Girl. She went on to play basketball for the nationally renowned Stanford University women’s basketball team and also played professional basketball in Europe.

Jim Dionizio was named the Rhode Island Schoolboy Athlete of the year in 1987 for his performances as a three-sport star at Cranston East.

They coached high school athletes from distinctly different social-economic backgrounds, but East Greenwich’s Arthur Kershaw and Hope’s Jerry Morgan shared the similar philosophy of developing a young man’s character as well as winning teams.

George Egan has served the Rhode Island high school hockey community for more than three decades as both a coach whose teams won championships and as an Interscholastic League director of the sport.

And finally there are three people who were neither star Rhode Island high school athletes nor legendary coaches, but have played a major role in the success of Rhode Island high school sports over the past three decade: John Gray, the Barrington High school principal and current chairman of the Principals Committee on Athletics; longtime basketball official Richard Hazard and Manny Correira, the veteran East Bay high school sports writer.

It is a class of distinction –– congratulations to all.

jgillool@projo.com