Six years of organizing and decades of camaraderie were rewarded Friday when Bettye Wallace became the second female inductee from Henderson State University in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.
The 60th annual Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame Ceremony was held Friday at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. This year's inductees were honored at various events throughout the week.
"It was very, very nice," Wallace said. "The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame did everything they could for us and just took the best care of us that you could ever expect."
More than 60 members of the Bettye's Reddies and other guests attended Friday night's ceremony in support of Wallace. About two dozen had brunch together on Saturday morning in North Little Rock.
"I had one player who flew in from Florida, I had about four who came from Texas, one from Iowa and, of course, quite a few from Arkansas, as well as Arkadelphia and Henderson folks," Wallace said.
"It was just tremendous. I did not get to see all of the people that were there for me. I would have loved to have been able to talk to everybody."
Wallace played tennis for Henderson State Teachers College and graduated in 1950. She began her career coaching basketball at Murfreesboro, taught math at Rison, taught physical education at Malvern and returned to Henderson as a physical education teacher in 1963.
Former coach and athletic director Duke Wells asked Wallace to take over the tennis team. She started the women's volleyball program in 1965.
Wallace taught a full 15-hour schedule to go along with her coaching duties and worked with female coaches at three other in-state institutions to establish an organization for women's college athletics in Arkansas. Margaret Downing, Patricia Gordon and Betty Swift traveled to Arkadelphia from Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, Arkansas Tech University in Russellville and the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, respectively, to craft a constitution for the Arkansas Women's Extramural Sports Association.
Downing was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2012. Arkansas Tech presents the Dr. Pat Gordon Award each year to the top undergraduate students in the Health and Physical Education Department. The Dr. Betty Swift Scholarship is available for full-time female students at Central Arkansas seeking a degree within the Department of Exercise and Sport Science.
Wallace became the first athletic director in the state in 1980 when Henderson named her the school's first women's athletic director. One of her teams termed themselves Bettye's Reddies and began to reach out to past student-athletes to hold annual reunions. Wallace retired in 1988 as Associate Professor Emeritus for Health, Physical Education and Recreation.
Members of the group began to organize in 2012 to push for Wallace's induction into the Hall of Fame.
Longtime special education teacher LouAnn Howell, at Lonoke High School, and Emily Hartsfield, retired, led the push and helped organize support for Wallace. They were joined by Sue Ehrgood, Karen Shofner and Sally Whitner, as well as Sally Carder, former president of Quapaw Technical Institute, president of National Park College and current interim director for HSU-Hot Springs.
"They just have worked and worked and worked to make sure that everything was just absolutely perfect, and it could not have been any better no matter what," Wallace said.
Wallace and her peers helped AWISA evolve into the Arkansas Women's Intercollegiate Sports Association and assists the Association of Intercollegiate Activities for Woman for national organization. She coached a number of championship volleyball and tennis teams while holding various positions within AWISA, AWESA and the AIAW.
Her master's degree was earned from the University of Northern Colorado. She also completed additional graduate work at the University of Arkansas.
Wallace received the "H" Award in 1995 and was part of the inaugural class inducted into the Reddie Hall of Honor in 1997. Henderson renamed its tennis facility the Bettye Wallace Tennis Center in 2006.
It still took additional campaigning for Wallace to receive her place among the state's greats in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.
"You can't just go in and say, 'Put this person on the ballot,'" Wallace said. "The president of the Hall told me at the luncheon that he had gotten more calls, emails and letters for me than from anyone he had ever had.
"These kids -- they are not kids anymore, but they are still my kids -- went out and contacted everybody they could think of, went through names they thought were people who knew me and wrote cards to them and made phone calls. They just pursued it so that I was put on the ballot."
Her fellow inductees Friday were former Arkansas and NFL offensive lineman Shawn Andrews, Arkansas and NFL running back Jerry Eckwood, retired basketball coach Olive Elders, Guy-Perkins basketball coach John Hutchcraft, Arkansas and NFL defensive lineman Brison Manor, Arkansas State and NFL linebacker Jerry Muckensturm, Arkansas quarterback and Stephens Inc. executive Kevin Scanlon and longtime Razorback trainer Dean Weber.
"Brison Manor, big ole football player, he would give his hand to help me up out of the chair when I needed help," Wallace said. "He made sure I got everything I needed when it got time for it."
"Kevin Scanlon was so good," Wallace added. "He and his wife sat right next to me during the ceremony. He made sure my chair was pulled out when I got there to sit down and he got it back out when I had to get up.
"Coach Hutchcraft helped me get up to the stand. Dean Weber was so nice to me. He knew one of my former students and we just had the best talk about him because I had not seen him in years."
Wallace said she appreciated her fellow inductees.
"I could not have asked for them to be any nicer to me, the old woman in the group," Wallace said. "They took care of me."
Sports on 04/08/2018