The Arkansas Track & Field Hall of Fame will induct its 25th class, including one honoree from the Three Rivers Edition coverage area, on Friday in North Little Rock.
Leon White, whose 40-year coaching career at Crossett and Cabot high schools led to six state championships, nine state runner-up finishes and 26 conference titles before he retired in 2018, will lead the class of seven, which will be inducted at a 6:30 p.m. banquet in the Silver City Ballroom of the Wyndham Riverfront Hotel.
“I’m very excited about it and very grateful,” White said. “It’s an honor I wasn’t really expecting to happen, but I feel very fortunate to be selected with the other people that are going in.”
White, whose competitive career was at Sylvan Hills and Harding University, won the 180-yard low hurdles in the 1973 Arkansas State Championships and set a Harding freshman record in the 400 hurdles in 1974. He earned NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) All-America honors in the 4x400 relay in 1978.
He earned a master’s degree at Northeast Louisiana and served as president of the Arkansas Track Coaches Association for six years. While at Crossett, he coached with Bobby
Richardson, a member of the inaugural ATFHF class, for 18 years. Over his career, White coached more than 100 all-state athletes and more than 50 scholarship athletes, including five at the University of Arkansas.
White was the 1997 Arkansas High School Coaches Association Girls Track Coach of the Year, the National Federation of High School Coaches Association Arkansas Boys Track and Field Coach of the Year; and the United States Track and Field/Cross Country Coaches Association 2015 Arkansas Girls Track and Field Coach of the Year.
While he wasn’t their pole-vault coach, White coached the record-setting Weeks twins at Cabot. Tori set the national high school indoor record of 14-4 in 2015, and Lexi set the national outdoor record at 14-7.5 in 2015. They went on to the U of A, where they won multiple Southeastern Conference and NCAA titles. Lexi made the 2016 United States Olympic Team, competing in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“I got to work in a great profession,” White said. “Coaching is what I love to do, and being able to represent my family and the coaches I’ve worked with is an honor.”
The rest of the class includes Kimmie Cleveland, whose coaching career at Warren and J.A. Fair yielded five conference championships, three state championships and two state runner-up finishes following his track career at the University of Central Arkansas; Danny Westbrook, who coached 35 of his 36 years at Bryant High School before retiring in 2016, leading the Hornets to six state championships, five state runner-up finishes and 17 conference championships while being named the 2004 National Federation of High School Coaches Coach of the Year for Track and Cross Country; Kenneth Davis, a hurdler/sprinter who earned All-Arkansas Intercollegiate and NAIA All-American honors four consecutive years at UCA; Anthony Hampton, a high school standout at West Memphis who was the Arkansas Gazette’s Track Athlete of the Year in 1989, when he was the Class AAAA state champion in the 100-,
200- and 400-meter, and, competing for Arkansas State, went on to win the Sun Belt Conference 100 and 55-meter indoor titles four consecutive years while remaining undefeated in the conference in short sprints (indoor and outdoor) for four years; Lewis Pike, who was the AIC (Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference) and NAIA 110-meter hurdle champion for Henderson State from 1974-77, qualified for the Olympic Trials in 1976, was an NAIA All-American in 1977 and ran for the USA in the World Games; and Doug Spencer, a Little Rock Central standout in the mid-1960s who went on to run the 440 and mile relay for the University of Alabama and continued his running career at the World Masters, USA Track and Field National Masters and Senior Olympics. He was a member of the winning 4x100 relay team at the World Masters Championships in Australia in 2001.
“This year’s class features three retired high school track coaches with a combined total of more than 100 years of coaching tenure in Arkansas schools,” said Ernest Miller of Conway, president of the ATFHF. “In their careers, they produced many championships and sent many athletes on to successful collegiate careers. This class is also strong on sprints/hurdles with inductees having strong collegiate careers and Olympic trial competitions.”
Miller said that until John McDonnell built a dynasty at the University of Arkansas beginning in the 1970s, track and field in Arkansas had a bigger tradition in the central part of the state.
“When the university decided to put some money in track and field and promote it, that turned out really well for John McDonnell to put them on the map,” Miller said. “The emphasis now is more in Fayetteville than anywhere else in Arkansas, but the old AIC schools used to have great tradition.”
McDonnell, the longtime Razorback coach who led teams to 40 national championships and five NCAA triple crowns (a sweep of the cross-country, indoor and outdoor titles in the same academic year) before retiring in 2008, was a 1996 Hall of Fame inductee. Nearly 20 of his former Razorback athletes have also been inducted.
Miller, in his fourth year as ATFHF president and a 2009 inductee, said the organization’s mission continues to be a worthy one.
“It’s important to promote the people who went before you and honor them so we can continue to emphasize track and field,” he said. “It is one of the most popular sports at the high school level in the United States. Obviously, the ones who worked hard to do it back in the day set the path for those who came later to follow in their footsteps and attain some of those same goals.”
For more information, contact Miller at (501) 329-6103.
(Donna Lampkin Stephens is a board member of the ATFHF.)