The annual Los Angeles Sportswalk of Fame — a longstanding San Pedro tradition that recognizes athletes and other figures who have made a lasting impact on their sports and the community — is set for Monday, Oct. 12, on the deck of the Battleship Iowa.
Honorees this year are Bob Seaman, John Nunn, Pete Demers, Tim Ursich, and Travis and Chase d’Arnaud.
Tickets for the luncheon ceremony are $125, and are available at lasportswalk.org or by calling 310-433-1515.
“Tickets are going fast for the luncheon, and we hope our SoCal fans make this a sell-out,” said Rick Pielago, president of the LA Sportswalk Board of Directors, “with proceeds supporting local scholarships for high school senior athletes in the harbor area.”
The 2025 event raised $6,000, which was awarded to six high school athletes this past May.
The event will begin with an 11:00 a.m. reception, followed by the lunch and ceremony at 11:30 a.m. at the Battleship Iowa Museum, 250 S. Harbor Blvd.
The 2026 honorees are:
- Bob Seaman for track and field, posthumously. Seaman (1935-2023) competed for the UCLA Bruins from 1955 to 57. In 1955, Seaman was a member of UCLA’s victorious conference mile relay team. He died at the age of 88 in Wilmington following an eight-year battle with Parkinson’s disease. The former UCLA distance runner set a record by running the mile. He served as team captain in 1957 and also set records in the 880-yard run and relays. He was inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.
- John Nunn is being honored for rowing. He competed in two Olympics, winning a Bronze medal in the 1968 Summer Olympics with his partner, Bill Maher, in the double sculls event and went on to coach the 1976 Olympic U.S. rowing team in Montreal, which placed fifth.
- Pete Demers, recognized for hockey, was with the L.A. Kings for 37 years, first joining the Springfield Kings in 1969 as the head athletic trainer. He joined the Los Angeles Kings three years later and ended the 2005-06 season having never missed a game, a streak of 2,632 consecutive regular season Kings/NHL contests. He was an inaugural member of the Kings Hall of Fame and also a longtime member of PHATS (the Professional Hockey Athletic Trainers Society) and the Society of Professional Hockey Equipment Managers. He is a certified member of the National Trainers Association.
- Tim Ursich will receive the Trani Award for coaching baseball. He wrote the memoir “The Boys of ’62: The Inspiring Story of the San Pedro Little League Champions,” chronicling the 1962 Southern League All-Star team and the winning of the Western Boys Baseball Association Little League World Series title in Northridge. His own Little League career began at the age of 8 in 1959 playing at Bloch Field in San Pedro.
- Travis and Chase d’Arnaud for baseball; Travis d’Arnaud was born in 1989 in Long Beach, attended Lakewood High School and is an MLB catcher (playing for teams including the Mets, Dodgers, Braves and Angels). Chase d’Arnaud was born in 1987, and was an infielder who played parts of multiple MLB seasons (Pirates, Braves, Red Sox, Padres, Giants) before retiring in 2019 to transition into business and media operations. They founded and remain co-owners of a training facility in Long Beach. It originally opened as d’Arnaud Athletics in January 2024 but this year integrated into Futures Trading Center.
Plaques bearing the names of the honorees can be viewed throughout downtown San Pedro.
The program’s mission is to promote and vitalize sports through education in the Los Angeles community; provide scholarship opportunities for youth in the South Bay; and continue expanding the Sportswalk concept throughout the waterfront area. It began as a gathering place for athletes at Jim and Lou Trani’s original Majectic Café, and grew into the San Pedro Sportswalk, which opened on Oct. 5, 1978, during a ceremony that also marked the planned revitalization of the town’s commercial district.
In 2004, the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors approved creating a nonprofit foundation to continue the Sportswalk, and in 2018, the foundation became the Los Angeles Sportswalk of Fame.
Supporters of the 2026 LA Sportswalk ceremony include the Port of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, Los Angeles Councilmember Tim McOsker, Pacific Crane Maintenance Company and SSA Marine.