BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – Former Southeast Missouri sports activities data director Ron Hines (posthumously) and softball coach Lana Richmond and former UT Martin tennis coach Dennis Taylor have been elected to the Ohio Valley Conference Hall of Fame.
The trio will likely be formally inducted on the annual OVC Honors Dinner which will likely be held on Thursday, May 28 in Franklin, Tennessee.
The Ohio Valley Conference Hall of Fame was organized in 1977 with the intent of honoring the coaches, directors, college and employees who’ve been related to the OVC for at the very least 5 years and supplied in depth and excellent service to the Conference. With the induction of this yr’s class, the membership will attain 103.
Hines, who handed away on March 16, 2026, helped carry publicity and notoriety to Southeast Missouri throughout his 29 years of service, retiring in 2009. He remarkably labored 851 consecutive males’s basketball video games; an all-time Division I report for an SID. Over the years, he wrote and produced 21 award-winning publications, together with 4 judged “Best in the Nation” by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
Hines helped SEMO host quite a few convention and nationwide championships, together with the 1983, 1984 and 1988 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field National Championships. He additionally served as the general public tackle announcer for quite a few occasions and a shade commentator for the college’s soccer and males’s basketball radio broadcasts when the Redhawks have been on the street.
What made Hines’ profession extra particular was his spouse, Mary, who spent greater than 25 years aiding him with statistics, media guides, recreation packages, posters and different publications. Mary handed away on August 23, 2012, after a battle with pancreatic most cancers. Ron and Mary have been inducted as half of the 2012 SEMO Athletics Hall of Fame Class.
Prior to that, Hines acquired a Lifetime Achievement Award from CoSIDA. Hines is simply the third full-time sports activities data director to be inducted into the OVC Hall of Fame.
Richmond served as Southeast Missouri State’s head softball coach for 32 years (1982-2014), compiling a report of 884-710-4, establishing herself because the winningest coach in OVC historical past. Under her management, SEMO claimed 5 consecutive OVC regular-season championships (1995-99) and 5 OVC Tournament titles, incomes 5 NCAA Tournament appearances.
In 1992, she efficiently ushered SEMO softball into the NCAA Division I period, guiding this system seamlessly into a brand new stage of competitors. During its Division I membership within the OVC, her groups reached the 30-win mark 10 occasions. She turned simply the forty second coach in NCAA softball historical past to obtain 800 profession victories, reaching that milestone in 2010, and then earned her 600th Division I win in 2013.
Richmond was named OVC Coach of the Year 5 occasions (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2009) and her 1996 crew produced one of probably the most dominant seasons in convention historical past, ending 22-2 in OVC play and 39-9 total. That crew opened the season with 32 consecutive victories, the longest profitable streak in program historical past.
She coached 9 All-Americans, 37 first-team All-Conference choices, 4 OVC Players of the Year, three OVC Pitchers of the Year, and one OVC Freshman of the Year. Equally spectacular was her dedication to tutorial achievement. Richmond’s groups constantly ranked among the many nation’s prime tutorial packages as acknowledged by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA). SEMO ranked within the NFCA Top 10 academically for six consecutive years, and the 2002 crew achieved the second-highest crew GPA within the nation.
She was inducted into the Southeast Missouri State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2020 and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.
Taylor served as UT Martin’s head tennis coach for 33 years, 27 of which got here whereas members of the OVC. Coaching each the boys’s and ladies’s packages, he reached the 500-win milestone in 2016 and retired after the 2019 fall semester with 535 profession victories – then the fifth-most wins amongst energetic NCAA Division I head ladies’s tennis coaches.
His seven OVC Coach of the Year awards are nonetheless a league report (two greater than anyone else relationship again to the inception of the award in 1977) as his groups mixed to nab six OVC championships. A really constant winner, Taylor’s ladies’s squad appeared within the OVC Championship event a whopping 26 occasions in his 27 seasons on the helm.
Fresh off the heels of producing a pair of NCAA Division II males’s nationwide champions in 1991, it did not take Taylor lengthy to get acclimated to the NCAA Division I ranks. He guided the ladies’s crew to back-to-back OVC titles in 1994 and 1995 – UT Martin’s second and third years as members of Division I. He additionally led the Skyhawk ladies to an OVC championship and first-ever berth within the NCAA Division I Tennis Regional in 2005 earlier than including common season crowns in 2006, 2011 and 2016.
Overall, Taylor coached 13 All-Americans, 5 OVC Players of the Year, three OVC Freshmen of the Year and 74 all-conference honorees. Taylor was inducted into the UT Martin Athletics Hall of Fame in 2021 – becoming a member of 9 of his former student-athletes.
As profitable as Taylor’s on-court accomplishments have been, his crew’s tutorial achievements have been equally spectacular. His groups routinely produced a 3.75 crew GPA or increased whereas 5 of his student-athletes have been named OVC Scholar-Athletes. Four of his squads (two males’s, two ladies’s) generated OVC Team Academic Awards whereas his Skyhawk ladies’s crew acquired nationwide recognition by the NCAA in 2014 as all eight gamers sported a 3.5 GPA or increased.