Twelve Inducted into TPS Hall of Fame
By TERRELL LESTER
Editor at Large
GREAT GROUP: Members of the Tulsa Public Schools Hall of Fame and representatives pose for a photo after the Hall of Fame Dinner Jan. 15.
GTR Newspapers photo
A dozen men and women, representing all nine Tulsa Public Schools high schools, were inducted into the TPS Third Annual Athletics Hall of Fame Jan. 15 at the Marriott Southern Hills.
Gil Cloud, TPS Director of Athletics and the organizer of the Hall of Fame, recently announced the honorees, selected by a committee of longtime Tulsa sports authorities.
Two of the inductees will be honored posthumously.
Doug Dugger, who died in 2013, launched the athletic programs at McLain (1959) and Memorial (1962) in those schools’ inaugural seasons. He served as basketball coach and director of athletics at Memorial, retiring in 1986.
Dugger, who coached at Pawhuska in the 1950s, was inducted into the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1968.
Art Williams Jr., who died in 1978, graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1934, earning letters in football, basketball, baseball and track. Also, he was a two-time Oklahoma Golden Gloves boxing champion.
While coaching football and basketball at Washington, Williams also began a career as an official in those two sports. Eventually, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Officials Hall of Fame.
Three honorees share one common bond: Each served as an assistant basketball coach under Webster Hall of Famer Bill Allen.
Gene Shell, a 1948 Daniel Webster graduate, returned to his alma mater and coached with Allen while beginning a storied run as head baseball coach.
Shell, who won baseball state championships in 1961 and 1962, moved on to Thomas Edison High School to coach baseball, basketball and football before joining the University of Tulsa athletics department in 1965. There, he coached the baseball team to national prominence, compiling 478 victories in 15 seasons.
J.V. Haney had already made a name for himself as a basketball coach at several stops before landing at Webster at Allen’s side in 1967.
Haney soon moved on to Edison as head basketball coach and returned to Webster upon Allen’s retirement to serve as coach and athletics director. Following his 30 years as coach and administrator, Haney launched a second career as a radio and television figure. He has contributed heavily to the statewide coverage of high school athletics.
Haney, former president of the Oklahoma Coaches Association, was inducted into the OCA Hall of Fame in 1982 and the Oklahoma Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2002.
Robert Sprague was a coach and administrator in Tulsa Public Schools for 41 years before retiring last spring.
A product of Nowata, Sprague started out as Allen’s assistant at Webster in 1973. Three years later, Sprague landed his first basketball head-coaching job, at Nathan Hale.
In 1988, he moved to Memorial where he served as assistant coach, head coach and director of athletics. He remained at Memorial until his retirement. On his watch, Memorial constructed and opened Veterans Arena this winter, and the VIP lounge bears his name, the Robert Sprague Hospitality Suite.
Gene Hart might not have worked for Allen at Webster, but he played for the iconic coach.
Hart, who graduated in 1959, lettered in football, basketball and baseball, winning two state championships in the latter sport. At Northeastern A&M, Hart earned junior college football All-America honors as a quarterback before transferring to the University of Tulsa to play baseball.
He returned to Webster as head baseball coach and won three state championships. He was inducted into the OCA Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Oklahoma Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2000.
Jill Most graduated from East Central High School in 1993 as one of the city’s most decorated softball players. She helped East Central win a state championship in 1990, pitching a perfect game in the semifinals.
At the University of Oklahoma, she was the Big 12 Conference Co-Player of the Year in 1994 and second-team All-America. Three years later, she led OU to the conference championship and again was named second-team All-America.
Now Jill Most-Barth, she played one year of professional fastpitch softball.
Melvin Driver, a native of Sand Springs, coached football, track and wrestling at McLain and Thomas Edison. His football teams at McLain won state championships in 1978, 1986 and 1987, and finished runner-up in 1981.
He was inducted into the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1996. The football stadium at McLain bears his name.
Neal Mask dominated the state basketball scene as a senior in 1967-68 at Nathan Hale High School. He was selected the high school Player of the Year before accepting a scholarship to the University of Kansas.
He lettered three years at Kansas under coach Ted Owens, winning the Big Eight Conference championship and reaching the Final Four in 1971.
Since leaving basketball, Mask has served as Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care at a Veterans Administration medical center in Missouri.
Lee Mayberry started his basketball career at Will Rogers High School, earning All-State honors and winning a state championship in 1988. He was a high-school All-American before moving on to the University of Arkansas. Under coach Nolan Richardson, Mayberry and the Razorbacks reached the 1990 Final Four.
In 1992, he was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the NBA draft. He remained in the league for four seasons, playing with two teams.
Currently, he is a graduate assistant on the Arkansas staff.
Mike Mims, 1964 graduate of Washington, tipped off his coaching career at his alma mater in 1969. After playing basketball at Washington and Central State College, he coached Washington to the first of three state championships in 1973. He followed with titles in 1977 and 1981.
After the third championship, Mims joined the coaching staff of Billy Tubbs at the University of Oklahoma, and remained in that position for 13 years.
He returned to Tulsa and to education and serves as Assistant Principal at Washington. He was inducted into the OCA Hall of Fame in 2010.
One year after graduating from Oklahoma State, where he played for Henry Iba, Eddie Sutton took his first steps along a path that would lead him to the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.
Sutton was hired to coach basketball at Central High School in 1959 and held that position until 1966, when he left to launch a program at College of Southern Idaho. Over the next four decades, he coached at Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma State, taking all four teams to the NCAA tournament.
In the 2007-08 season, Sutton won his 800th collegiate basketball game as coach at the University of San Francisco, three years before his induction into the collegiate hall of fame.
Updated 02-02-2015
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