Pat Tillman, the Leland High graduate who earned fame in the National Football League before joining the U.S. Army Rangers and was subsequently killed in action in Afghanistan this spring, will be inducted into the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame, while Leland water polo and swimming star Zac Monsees will be named the male High School Athlete of the Year.

The ceremony, to be held on Nov. 4 at the HP Pavilion in downtown San Jose, will also honor:

* Kurt Rambis, National Basketball Association star and member of the World Championship Los Angeles Lakers who was a Cupertino High player, as a Hall of Famer;

* Amy Chow, a two-time Olympic gymnast, who trained her entire career at West Valley Gymnastics in Campbell, will be the female High School Athlete of the Year;

* Baseball pitcher Jason Windsor, who played at Leigh High School, to be honored as the male Amateur Athlete of the Year;

* Stacey Stevenson, who lives in the Rose Garden district of San Jose, to be honored as the Special Olympian of the Year.

Monsees, 18, qualified for the Olympic swimming trials this year. A competitive swimmer since he was 4 years old, his specialties are the 200- and 400-meter individual medleys, but he's also won Central Coast Section titles in the 200- and 500-meter freestyle races.

Monsees, who graduated from Leland this spring, now starts on the swim team at UC-Berkeley, which climbed from fourth in the nation to third after the meet on the weekend of Sept. 17­19.

He's thinking about majoring in a science-related field, and he's got both swimming and science in common with his father. Mike Monsees, who coaches both swimming and water polo for Leland and also teaches biology at the school, said coaching his son was never a problem. "Not at all. He's real easy to coach, a tremendously hard worker. It's been fun watching him grow up and go past me," said the elder Monsees, who qualified as an All-American swimmer twice before going on to coach the men's swim team at San José State University after graduating from college in 1971. And 15-year-old daughter Courtney Monsees also qualified for the Olympic trials this year.

Mike Monsees said his son hopes to attend the award dinner if he can afford the time away from swim practice.

No perfect memorial

Alex Garwood, executive director of the Pat Tillman Foundation, called the Almaden Resident from a car on his way back from Phoenix, where the Arizona Cardinals retired Tillman's number on Sept. 20.

"His family was very honored, and very thankful, and very humble," said Garwood, whose wife is the sister of Tillman's widow. "They're the way you'd expect Pat to be."

He said he hopes people remember how complex Tillman was and how he inspired others.

"There's no perfect memorial, since he's dead," said Garwood. "But what happened in San Jose was pretty close."

A bronze plaque to be placed in the HP Pavilion will help the community remember Tillman, reading in part, "He challenged himself as a complete person, and thus challenged everyone who knew him."

Tillman graduated from Leland in 1994. A trophy case outside the school gymnasium holds a plaque awarded to the school's football team for the Central Coast Section's Division 1 championship his senior year. There are no names on the plaque, but he was a part of that team.

According to a biography written by the SJSA, in high school, Tillman once sneaked back into a game after being subbed out, so the coach took his shoulder pads and helmet away from him for the rest of the game. He also came to the defense of a friend in a fight and had to serve 30 days' juvenile detention. He later told Sports Illustrated he was proud of that chapter of his life, not because of what happened, but because "it made me realize that stuff you do has repercussions. You can lose everything."

Tillman was killed April 23 while fighting in Afghanistan as a member of the 75th Army Ranger regiment. According to news reports, Tillman was killed by friendly fire while on patrol near a U.S. military base at Khost, a region near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Two other U.S. soldiers were reported injured in the incident.

Tillman walked away from a $3.6 million contract to continue playing professional football for the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army and become a Ranger. His younger brother, Kevin, a former minor league baseball player with the Cleveland Indians organization, enlisted at the same time.

"He has stood out as an athlete with an uncommon appreciation for his own personal responsibility and social conscience since his days at Leland. To those who knew him, his choice of the Army over the NFL may have been surprising at first, but in retrospect was perfectly in character," said Jody Meacham, director of communications for SJSA.

In addition to a scholarship set up by the Pat Tillman Foundation and the Hall of Fame induction, another honor is planned—an ad hoc committee at Leland petitioned the school board two weeks ago to rename the school's stadium Pat Tillman Stadium.

The San Jose Sports Authority's San Jose Sports Hall of Fame induction and dinner will be held on Nov. 4 at the HP Pavilion. The dinner ceremony begins at 7 p.m. Dinner tickets start at $150. Call 408.288.2932 for more information.

Staff writer Anne Ernst contributed to this report.