Moore, 5 others get their Hall pass
List of inductees includes standouts from basketball, track, volleyball and football
ABILENE – Randall Moore, the third-leading scorer in ACU men's basketball history, leads a group of six who have been selected for induction into the Sports Hall of Fame at Abilene Christian University.
Also elected to the hall are former women's basketball star and assistant coach Deonna Shake, former volleyball and women's track and field standout Stacy Atkinson, former coach and ACU administrator Dwain Hart and the late Kelly Kent, a former Wildcat football great. Elected as this year's Lifetime Achievement Award winner is longtime ACU supporter and former student-athlete Rex Klepper, a retired teacher and coach now living in Abilene.
The six will be officially inducted into the hall during the 18th annual Hall of Fame festivities, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2004. With the addition of the six members of the Class of 2003-04, the ACU Sports Hall of Fame now includes 102 men and women. This year's class represents the first time in the 18-year history of the hall that two women have been inducted in the same year. The Hall of Fame now includes 10 former student-athletes, coaches or supporters of ACU athletics.
Moore – who was the longtime head coach at Pima Community College in Tucson, Ariz., and is now the director of athletics at Pima West Community College – scored 1,698 points while playing on some of the best teams in ACU history from 1976-80. A third-team NAIA all-America in 1979-80, Moore and teammate Rodney Fedell (2000 Sports Hall of Fame inductee) led ACU to the 1979-80 Lone Star Conference title, the NAIA District IV title and the NAIA national tournament.
Shake is one of the greatest “winners” in ACU women's basketball history. The ACU women have won nine Lone Star Conference basketball championships in their history, and Shake has been a part of eight of them either as a player or a coach. As a guard for the Wildcats from 1982-86, Shake, who was Deonna Moore as a student-athlete, was a three-time first team all-LSC player and two-time all-conference tournament player. She then served as the Wildcats' assistant coach from 1992-99 and was on the bench in 1995-96 when the Wildcats reached the NCAA Division II Elite Eight.
Atkinson had an outstanding two-sport career at ACU from 1982-86, playing volleyball in the fall and then competing in track and field in the spring. In track and field, she was a two-time all-America heptathlete, and she still holds the school record in the heptathlon, scoring 5,340 points at the NCAA Division II national championship meet in 1986. In volleyball, she was a two-time first team all-conference player and ranks in the all-time top 10 in all the major individual categories in school history.
Hart served as the ACU men's tennis coach for 16 seasons from 1956-1971, racking up a record of 168-101-5, including a best record of 17-3 in 1966. After resigning as tennis coach, Hart became the head of the health, physical education and recreation department at ACU, a job he held for 22 years, while also working as the school's director of women's athletics. He became associated with the Texas Special Olympics in 1968, and was the first Texas State Coordinator of Special Olympics in 1971.
Kent was well on his way to re-writing the ACU football record book before a heart attack tragically cut his life short in February 1979. Kent, the Most Outstanding Player in ACU's 1977 NAIA Division I national championship win over Southwestern Oklahoma State, is the school's sixth-leading all-time rusher and was a member of ACU's All-Decade Football team for the 1970s.
Klepper has been associated with ACU for more than 50 years. Klepper, a 1949 graduate who earned a master's in administration in 1957, played football in 1947 and baseball in 1947 and 1948 after enrolling at Abilene Christian College after a three-year stint in the Navy during World War II. He taught school and coached for 33 years in Hobbs, Texas, Colorado City, Odessa, Snyder and McAllen, retiring in 1981 and moving back to Abilene. Almost 80 years old, Klepper continues to play in the ACU Alumni Baseball Game each year, and he and his wife, Irene, have been longtime supporters of the ACU athletics program.
