KAHF
Class of
2013 We
are proud to have honored the newest members to be inducted into
the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame:
Calvin
Borel ●
Jerry Carroll
●
Julie Ditty ●
Pervis Ellison
Bo
McMillin ●
Donna Bender Moir ●
Dwayne Woodruff
Please scroll down this page for more details on our inductees.
Extensive photo coverage of the induction to follow soon.
Thursday,
June 13, 2013
Grand Ballroom Crowne Plaza
Louisville Hotel
830 Phillips Lane
Louisville, Kentucky 40209
502-367-2251
OK, Coach!
Former U of L star Pervis Ellison,
one of seven members of the Class of 2013 inducted into the Kentucky
Athletic Hall of Fame on Thursday evening, June 13, 2013, attempts to
raise the microphone stand a foot or so, as his former coach, U of L's
Denny Crum
(a 1997 KAHF inductee), points where to implement the play while
barking out instructions from the near sidelines.
Many
more photos of all of the activities in the days ahead!
The Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame
proudly
presents its Class of 2013
Alvin "Bo"
McMillin
McMillin was quarterback for Centre College in 1917. In 1918 he served in
the Navy before returning to lead Centre from 1919 to 1921.
During his career, the "Praying Colonels" achieved an overall record of
38-4, and Bo was named to Walter Camp’s All-American team in his last
three seasons. On Oct. 29, 1921, in a game that has been
hailed as the biggest upset in college football history, Bo raced 32 yards
for the only touchdown allowing tiny Centre to beat mighty Harvard, a team
that hadn’t been defeated in five seasons. After college, Bo played
professionally for two seasons. Bo was a successful college coach,
compiling a record of 146-77-13. In 1945, Bo received the AFCA Coach of
the Year award for accomplishments at Indiana University. In 1951, Bo was
inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and received the Amos
Alonzo Stagg Award from the AFCA.
Calvin
Borel
Calvin Borel was
born November 7, 1966, in St. Martinville, La. The
youngest of five boys, he learned to ride before he could walk and honed
his skills in the legendary bush tracks of Southern Louisiana as a youth.
His first win came in 1982 at Delta Downs in Vinton, La. Borel would go on
to become the only jockey in history to win three Kentucky Derbies in a
four year span, taking the 133rd, 135th and 136th running of the Run for
the Roses. Borel was the regular rider of 2009 Oaks and Preakness winner
and eventual Eclipse Award Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra as she
became the first filly in history to capture the storied Woodward Stakes
at Saratoga. On March 7, 2013, Borel became the 26th rider in history to
win 5,000 career races. He is to be elected into the National Thoroughbred
Hall of Fame in 2013.
Judge Dwayne D.
Woodruff
A Bowling Green native and 1979 University of Louisville graduate,
Woodruff played defensive back for 12 seasons with the Pittsburgh
Steelers: Super Bowl XIV as a rookie; team MVP in 1982; team captain for
final three seasons; ranks 5th on the Steelers all-time list with 37
interceptions and 4th in interceptions returned for touchdowns. Earned law
degree (1988) from Duquesne University and practiced law while playing
football till 1990. Woodruff was elected Judge of Pittsburgh’s Court of
Common Pleas in 2005. The University of Louisville’s Woodruff Academic
Center was dedicated in 2006.
Julie Ditty
Julie Ditty grew up in Ashland, Ky., with five siblings and parents,
Juanita
and Jack Ditty. Julie began playing on the Russell High School tennis team
in the 2nd grade, earned 11 varsity letters and won three Kentucky high
school singles titles. She was ranked #1 in USTA 14’s and won 12 national
USTA junior titles. Julie earned her education degree at Vanderbilt. She
was a three time All-American, All-SEC, Academic All-SEC, Vanderbilt
Female Athlete of the Year, Tennessee Amateur Athlete of the Year and led
Vanderbilt to the NCAA finals in 2001. As a WTA pro for 10 years, she won
a record 38 USTA Pro Circuit titles and played four seasons of World Team
Tennis. She played in Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open and French Open.
Ditty was a member of US Fed Cup Team that defeated Argentina in 2009.
Highest WTA World Ranking 89-singles and 65-doubles.
Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll has had a very diverse career. After college he worked as a
golf pro and dabbled in comedy and acting before realizing his dream of
being a real estate developer. In the 1980s he purchased Latonia Race
Course in Northern Kentucky and rebuilt the facility to become Turfway
Park. After the state declined to expand gambling, Jerry shifted his focus
from horse racing to auto racing. Carroll purchased Gallatin County Farm
in Sparta, Kentucky, and he and investors built the $152 million Kentucky
Speedway, which opened in 2000. Despite great success and large crowds,
NASCAR wouldn’t assign a Sprint Car Race to Kentucky, so Carroll sold the
Speedway in 2008. In 2011, Jerry got to see his dreams realized when
NASCAR held a Sprint Car Race in Sparta.
Donna Bender
Moir Donna Bender Moir was a dedicated
student-athlete, coach and athletic
director at Sacred Heart Academy. She was the first person in the state to
win a KHSAA basketball state championship as both a player and a coach.
She won a state record, three straight KHSAA basketball championships from
2002 to 2004, and she has been recognized as The Courier-Journal Statewide
Coach of the Year on three occasions. Under her leadership, Sacred Heart
has won more state championships in women’s athletics than any other
program in the state. Bender-Moir is a proud mom of four, and has also
been recognized as one of the top female golfers in the state of Kentucky.
Pervis Ellison
Pervis Ellison played center for the University of Louisville basketball
team from 1986 to 1989. While at U of L, he received the nickname "Never
Nervous Pervis" for his style of play. As a freshman, he helped his team
win the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, and he was the
second freshman ever to be named Most Outstanding Player. In 1989, Pervis
was the first overall NBA draft pick and went to play for the Sacramento
Kings. Unfortunately, his 11 year NBA career was plagued by injuries, but
he still managed to score 4,494 points, have 3,170 rebounds, and blocked
752 shots. Today, Pervis’ jersey hangs at the KFC Yum! Center for all the
success he brought to the University of Louisville.
Hundreds helped us celebrate our
2013 High School Athletes of the Year
As part of
our evening program, three high school standouts also were recognized:
James Quick of Trinity
High School; Rebecca Greenwell of Owensboro
Catholic High School; and
Makayla Epps
of Marion County High School.
Click here for photos and write-ups on this trio of young Kentucky athletes.
Looking Back:
KAHF Class of 2012 Inducted
Coach Hugh
Durham gives a highly entertaining acceptance
speech as the newest members of the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame are inducted
on the evening of Thursday, June 7, at Louisville's Crowne Plaza Hotel. A crowd
of some 500-plus gathered to honor the Class of 2012 at a formal banquet that
helped raised more than $68,000 to benefit Kosair Charities. A full report and
dozens of photos of all of the festivities will follow shortly.
Jim Reed Photos
Frederick Robert "Rick"
Robey
teamed up to win a basketball championship at every level: a state
championship in high school, the 1978 NCAA title at the University of
Kentucky and NBA honors in 1981 with the Boston Celtics. Rick scored 3,723
points throughout his NBA career and had his (#53) jersey retired by UK.
Robey now
lives in Louisville and is shown here with his wife, Bonnie, and their son,
Sam, who plays football for Florida, before Rick's Thursday evening inducted
into the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame.
Lee Corso
arrives with Betsy, his wife of 55 years, for our Kentucky Athletic Hall of
Fame ceremonies. He says he’s pulling for the University of Louisville to be
in the Big 12. “They better invite Louisville if they know what’s good for
the conference.”
Nationally known as a sports commentator on ESPN, Corso coached football at
U of L from 1969 to 1972. While being inducted into the Hall of Fame, he
said he was never happier in his life than during “those days at the old
Fairgrounds stadium.”
Angel
McCoughtry,
three-time All-American for the U of L Cardinals, is headed for the Olympics
this summer as a member of U.S. women’s team. McCoughtry was among eight
honorees inducted into the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame Thursday, just
three years after graduating from U of L. She’s playing professionally with
the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA, having been named rookie of the year in 2009.
Hugh Durham
excelled in several sports in high school, but elected to play basketball in
college, starring at Florida State. He later coached the Seminoles, then
guided the Georgia Bulldogs for 17 years and later came out of retirement to
spend eight years at Jacksonville. He still lives and golfs in Florida. Now
he's a Hall of Fame honoree in three states!
Seth
Hancock, shown here with his wife, Debbie, and
daughter, Allison (who's on the golf team at Centre),
is the owner of Claiborne Farm, home of Swale, winner of the 1984
Kentucky Derby, and Blame, winner of the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic. Of
course, Hancock is known for syndicating the breeding rights to Secretariat
in 1973, (before the Triple Crown achievement) for what was then a
staggering $6 million. Hancock joins his father, Arthur "Bull" Hancock Jr.,
who was inducted into the KAHF in 1989.
T. Kevin
Flanery, president of Churchill Downs,
receives a replica of the brass plaque honoring that institution from Jim Ellis, KAHF president. Flanery is the first
Louisville native to serve as president of the venerable racetrack
organization since 1949. He accepted the recognition on behalf of Churchill
Downs, the home of the Kentucky Derby and a world renowned symbol of
thoroughbred racing. Racing fans will tell you that Churchill Downs has a
heart and soul, and now it is a member of the Kentucky Athletic Hall of
Fame.
Bobby Watson
makes a closer examination of his recognition plaque as his wife looks on
during our June 7 induction ceremonies. A key starter on Adolph Rupp’s UK
Wildcats teams, including the 1951 national championship squad, the
5-foot-10 Watson would go on to play for the Minneapolis Lakers after being
drafted by the Milwaukee Hawks in 1952. After his pro career, Watson was an
outstanding basketball coach at Owensboro High. Not bad for a UK walk-on who
Coach Rupp initially thought was too short to play basketball.
Homer Rice
excelled in several sports in high school and would become an All-American
as quarterback for Centre College in 1950. He went on to coach in both
high school and college and was quite an innovator,
developing the triple-option offense that revolutionized football. He was
athletic director at Georgia Tech for 17 years and The 85-year-old has authored seven books,
the latest being Leadership Fitness: Developing and Reinforcing
Successful, Positive Leaders, and a personal copy was given to all
banquet attendees.
Marvin Smith welcomed
the banquet crowd on behalf of the 2012 KAHF corporate sponsor INSURAMAX,which is
headquartered in Louisville. The company CEO congratulated 2012 KAHF inductees and award winners for their
contributions to sports in Kentucky.
The
mission of the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame is twofold:
— To recognize those individuals and teams that have made significant
contributions to sports and have achieved a high standard of athletic
success representing the honored traditions of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
— To support, in a meaningful way, Kosair Charities, which does so much
toward providing world class medical care for thousands of children
throughout Kentucky and Southern Indiana.
Smile!
Download an
Adobe PDF file of the full 2012 program write-up here:
Note: Links
with the PDF symbol shown above indicate that the document is in Adobe Reader format.
This is a widely used format that ensures correct display of documents on
most computer systems. If you do not have Adobe Reader, you can get it by
clicking here:
In addition to
close-up photos of inductees, their friends, fans and families, and shots of
supporters who came to meet and greet our honorees, we'll also have photos of
our high school athletes of the year and their families.
Much more to come!
The Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame
Introduces Its Class of 2012 Rick Robey, Angel McCoughtry,
Bobby Watson,
Lee Corso, Homer Rice, Hugh Durham, Seth Hancock
and Churchill Downs, too!
We in Kentucky
have the horses . . .
. . .
but, as much as we love our thoroughbreds, it's really another interest ties us all together, whether we’re from the hills and
hollows of the Cumberland Plateau, the rolling meadows of the Bluegrass, or
the flood plains and wetlands of Kentucky’s western tip: It’s our enduring
love of one very special sport. We dabble in all manner of organized
contest, of course, but the abiding fidelity that both unites
and divides Kentuckians across the board is basketball.
In our Bluegrass State,
we quickly develop lifelong loyalties to our high school and college teams,
and we have a rich and fabled heritage to support our teams, our dreams and
our aspirations. This year Western Kentucky University Hilltoppers and
the Murray State University Racers earned their way into March Madness, and both the University of Louisville
Cardinals and the
University of Kentucky Wildcats fought all the way to the NCAA's Final Four,
with the
UK Wildcats going on to become national champions! Basketball is like, well,
a basketball to us.
It begins early
as barefoot farm kids and city street urchins alike engage in pickup games
on outdoor courts or face the goal alone as they dream of one day hitting the winning
shot as the game clock ticks down. While the best of the crop hit the courts
in organized contests, coached to hit the open man on the give-and-go, the
majority of us become ardent and vocal spectators, fans for life. By early
adulthood, fierce team allegiances have been formed that have no equal in
politics or other partisan pursuits. Our love of the sport transcends those
lines that otherwise divide us andbrings the faithful together
from all walks of life to cheer and fret as we pit this year’s home team
against all comers. Basketball is an institution in Kentucky.
It’s no real
surprise
then that four of our Kentucky Athletic Hall of
Fame Class of 2012 inductees made their mark in the world of hoops.
Basketball is in our blood, and we root for the home team. We love our
football, too, and we have two inductees who made their names on the
gridiron. Rounding out our KAHF Class of 2012 are two horse racing legends.
Let's meet all of our inductees!
The
Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame
presents the Class of 2012:
Rick Robey
starred at the
University of Kentucky. At UK, Robey was a member of
the team that won the
1978 NCAA Championship and
the team that was the
1975 NCAA Runner Up. Robey was the third overall pick in the
1978 NBA Draft, selected by the
Indiana Pacers. Robey then played eight seasons (1978–86) in the
National Basketball Association as a member of the Indiana Pacers,
Boston Celtics, and Phoenix
Suns. He scored 3,723 points in his career and was a member of the 1981
Celtics
championship team.
Angel McCoughtry
is a professional basketball
player who completed her
college career at the
University of Louisville in 2009. She was selected first overall by the
Atlanta Dream in the
2009 WNBA Draft and is considered its
franchise player. She also
plays for the Turkish powerhouse
Fenerbahçe Istanbul
in the
EuroLeague Women.
Bobby Watson
played
basketball for Owensboro High School and The University of Kentucky as a
guard. He also played in the
National Basketball Association. Watson was drafted by the
Milwaukee Hawks in the
1952 NBA Draft.
He first played in the NBA with the
Minneapolis Lakers in 1954 before being traded back to the Milwaukee
Hawks
for Lew
Hitch.
Lee Corso
is
a sports broadcaster and
football analyst for ESPN. He has been featured on ESPN's
College GameDay program since its inception and he appeared annually as
a commentator in EA Sports'
NCAA Football through
NCAA Football 11. In 1969, he was given the head coaching position at
Louisville where he coached his ESPN colleague
Tom Jackson. After taking Louisville to only its second-ever bowl game
in 1972, he was hired by
Indiana.
Homer Rice
was a college athletic director and football coach. From 1967 to 1968, he
served as the head football coach at
Cincinnati, and at
Rice. He has also served as Offensive Coordinator at
Oklahoma (1966), and Assistant Coach at
Kentucky.
Hugh Durham
is a native of Louisville, Kentucky, and is the first and only coach in the
history of NCAA Division I basketball to lead two different schools to the
NCAA Final Four for the first and only time in each school's history (Florida
State University - 1972;
University of Georgia - 1983). No other coach in either school's history
has been able to duplicate Durham's achievements.
Seth Hancock
is the current owner of the famous Claiborne Farm near Paris, Kentucky. Secretariat
was syndicated by Seth Hancock for breeding purposes and stood at stud at
Claiborne Farm at the conclusion of his racing career at the end of 1973
until his death in 1989.
Churchill Downs
is a
Thoroughbred racetrack most famous for hosting the
Kentucky Derby annually. It officially opened in 1875, and held the
first Kentucky Derby and the first
Kentucky Oaks in that same year. Churchill Downs has also hosted the
renowned
Breeders' Cup on seven occasions,
most recently in 2011.
The
Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame display
at the KFC Yum! Center honors the accomplishments of athletes from
across the Commonwealth with a display on the east and west sides of the
Main Concourse. The display's nine panels showcase the Hall of Fame
athletes in various sports as well as coaches, contributors and icons of
the Bluegrass State. Those highlighted throughout the display include
Denny Crum, Hillerich & Bradsby, Muhammad Ali, Adolph Rupp, Phil Simms,
Dan Issel, Tom Jurich, Paul "Bear" Bryant, Pat Day, Tori Murden-McClure
and many others.
To read about all of our
Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame inductees, please
click here.
Our
Class of 2013 will be
inducted on June 13, 2013.
Now we are accepting
candidates for our
Class of 2014.
The nomination deadline
for the Class of 2014
is August 31, 2013.
KAHF nominations are
accepted year-round here: Nomination Page
Calvin
Borel
Julie Ditty
Download an
Adobe PDF file of the full 2012 program write-up here: 
