Baseball | 8/26/2016 4:14:00 PM
ABILENE – Another distinguished class will take its place in the ACU Sports Hall of Fame this fall when they are inducted into the hall of fame during ceremonies at the Hunter Welcome Center.
The seven inductees are former men's basketball standout Peter Kiganya, football's all-time leading tackler Ryan Boozer, the most-decorated volleyball player in ACU history in Amanda (Slate) Farrell, former women's tennis and basketball player and softball coach Carol Tabor, baseball great Brad Massey, and softball's first great player Shelly Owen. This year's recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award is Ron Willingham.
Also being honored at this year's hall of fame ceremony is former baseball standout Dr. Joel Wells, who is this year's winner of the Jim Womack Award. That award is given in honor and recognition of the academic achievements of former ACU basketball standout Jim Womack, who is now a distinguished professor in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology at Texas A&M University. The award honors former ACU student-athletes who excelled not only on the field or court of play, but also in the classroom.
The Class of 2016-17 will be officially inducted into the hall of fame during festivities on Friday, Oct. 21, at 6 p.m. in the McCaleb Conference Center of the Hunter Welcome Center on the ACU campus. The cost of a ticket is $25 per person and they can be purchased by calling
Amy McAlister at 325-674-2323 or by emailing her at amy.mcalister@acu.edu by Oct. 14.
With the addition of the seven members of this year's class, the ACU Sports Hall of Fame now includes 185 men and women. With the addition of Farrell, Tabor and Owen, the hall now has 30 former ACU female student-athletes and coaches among its membership, along with three other women as Lifetime Achievement Award recipients.
Here are bios on each of the seven inductees:
Ryan Boozer (Football) – First team NCAA Division II all-region selection in 1999. … Second team all-region selection in 2000 and 2001. … First team all-Lone Star Conference in 2000 and 2001 and a second team all-LSC pick in 1999. … Selected by ACU coaches as ACU's best tackler from 1999-2001. … Two-time team captain in 2000 and 2001. … ACU's all-time leading tackler with 388 tackles from 1998-2001. … Selected to ACU's all-Decade Team for the 1990s, and was a second team selection to the all-Century Team in 2005.
Amanda (Slate) Farrell (Volleyball) – 2005 AVCA Second Team All-America. … Two-time Daktronics First Team All-Region. … Two-time Lone Star Conference MVP. … Three-time First Team All-Lone Star Conference. … Academic All-Lone Star Conference Honorable Mention. … Three-time ACU Most Valuable Player. … 2002 recipient of the Joyce Curtis Wildcat Award. … Ranks third all-time at ACU with 500 blocks and 1,544 kills. … Recorded 487 kills in 2005 … Blocked 151 shots in 2003 and 141 in 2005. … School record holder with 12 service aces in a single match vs. Southeast Oklahoma St.. … Recorded eight service aces vs. Lubbock Christian.
Peter Kiganya (Men's Basketball) – One of the great big men in ACU basketball history. … Played three seasons for the Wildcats from 1998-2001, helping the Wildcats to a 20-win season in 1998-99. .. That year the Wildcats reached the NCAA Division II South Central Region championship game. … He was a first team all-region performer as a junior in 1999-2000 and a three-time all-Lone Star Conference honoree, including a two-time first team selection. … Scored a career-high 41 points vs. Central Oklahoma on Dec 2, 1999, the fifth-best scoring game in ACU history. … Went on to play professionally and for the Kenyan national team for several years before retiring in 2012. In 2013, he was named as one of the Wildcats' Starting Five, one of the five players chosen by fans as the top Wildcat players during their tenure in the Lone Star Conference. … He has been a college assistant coach since 2013.
Brad Massey (Baseball) – Offensive MVP on ACU Baseball all-Century Team, selected in January 2006. … Called at the time by
Britt Bonneau "the best player to ever step foot on the field at Crutcher Scott Field." … When he finished in 2003, Massey was the program's all-time leader in home runs and total bases and was in the top 10 in most every other offensive category. … Carried the Wildcats to the 2003 NCAA Division II South Central Region Tournament championship and the program's only appearance in the Division II College World Series. … Second team all-region shortstop in 2001 and second team all-region third baseman in 2003. … Three-time first team all-Lone Star Conference. … Three-time all-Lone Star Conference post-season tournament selection. … Led ACU to conference titles in 2001 and 2002. … South Central Region all-tournament in 2001, 2002 and 2003. … Regional tournament MVP in 2003.
Shelley Owen (Softball) – Third team NFCA all-America. … Two-time First Team NFCA All-Region. … Two-time Lone Star Conference South Division Pitcher of the Year. … Two-time first team all-Lone Star Conference. … CoSIDA Academic all-district. … Academic all-Lone Star Conference. … Varsity record-holder with 637.2 innings pitched, 308 strikeouts, 2.13 ERA, 63 wins and 90 complete games. … ACU season record holder in six categories, including 172 strikeouts in 1997. … Tossed five no-hitters, including both ends of a doubleheader against UT-Permian Basin on March 5, 1997.
Carol Tabor (Women's Tennis / Women's Basketball / Softball coach) – Two-time LSC doubles champ with Donna Sykes in 1986 and 1987 for coach Cecil Eager's LSC title teams. Also NCAA D2 all-America, academic all-LSC. Later served as Wildcats' inaugural softball coach with mark of 38-19 in first season in 1997, two LSC south division titles and 7-year record of 172-166.
Lifetime Achievement Award winner
Ron Willingham – A 1954 ACU graduate, Willingham spent nine years driving from Amarillo to Abilene each Monday delivering leadership training lessons to the ACU football team. Then he made a significant donation to ACU Athletics toward the purchase of new weight room equipment at the Powell Fitness Center. A lifelong Wildcat fan, Willingham is the 24th recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award. A pioneer in performance enhancement, Willingham has written and designed more than 20 human development courses that have been conducted in 130 nations. In excess of 35,000 facilitators have been certified through them with nearly 2 million graduates of his programs.
Jim Womack Award
Joel Wells, M.D., M.P.H. – One of the best power hitters in ACU baseball history, Wells is the fifth recipient of the Jim Womack Award, which honors former ACU student-athletes who excelled not only on the field or court of play, but also in the classroom. A native of Abilene, Wells is currently the assistant professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the University Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. He graduated near the top of his class at Tulane University Medical School and was a Harvard Combined Orthopedic Surgery Resident at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston where he served as Chief Resident from 2014-15. He was a third team all-America and first team academic all-District VI in 2006, and was a three-time first team Academic all-Lone Star Conference (2004-06). He not only excelled in the classroom, but on the field. He left ACU third in both RBI (176) and home runs (26), seventh all-time in hits (217), triples (10) and total bases (358), eighth in runs scored (149), and ninth in doubles (43). His 18 home runs in 2006 set a new single-season record and are currently the second-most home runs hit in a single season by a Wildcat. He was a second team all-America in 2006 as the designated hitter and was a three-time all-Lone Star Conference performer, and was the 2006 LSC MVP.
About the Womack Award
In 2007, ACU began giving out the Jim Womack Award in honor and recognition of the academic achievements of former ACU basketball standout Jim Womack, who is now a distinguished professor in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology at Texas A&M University. The award honors former ACU student-athletes who excelled not only on the field or court of play, but also in the classroom.
Womack was a four-time letterwinner for the Wildcats and captain of the 1962-63 basketball team that finished 15-9 under head coach Dee?Nutt. After graduating from Abilene Christian in 1964 with a bachelor of science in mathematics education, Womack set his basketball sneakers aside and began to make his name a household one in the science world.
He completed his PhD in Genetics in 1968 at Oregon State and then returned to Abilene Christian where he was an assistant professor of biology from 1968-71 and associate professor of biology from 1971-73. Since 1973 he has been a professor at Texas A&M?University, and in 2007 the ACU?athletics department named an award after him that is given to a graduate who has combined athletic excellence with excellence in the classroom.
Womack is known for conducting pioneering research in the cattle genome. He was responsible for the development of a whole genome cattle-hamster radiation hybrid (RH) panel. This work fueled a new thrust in cattle genomics and comparative gene mapping. RH mapping is an effective tool for building ordered maps of conserved sequences, derived from genes, thus integrating linkage and physical maps of mammalian chromosomes.
Womack has received several awards and honors for his research. In 1993, he was awarded the CIBA Prize for Research in Animal Health. In 1999, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2001, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture along with Roger N. Beachy of the Danforth Plant Science Center "for the use of recombinant DNA technology, to revolutionize plant and animal sciences, paving the way for applications to neighboring fields."
Womack Award Winners
2007 Samantha Borgeson (softball)
2008 Alex Guiton (basketball)
2009 Samuel Maroney (basketball)
2016 Dr. Joel Wells (baseball)
