Seven added to PSU Athletics Hall of Fame

June 23, 2009 12:34 am

— From staff reports
sports@joplinglobe.com
PITTSBURG, Kan. — Three All-Americans and a long-time supporter are among the seven individuals named to the Pittsburg State University Athletics Hall of Fame.
Brian Moorman (football and track), Marc Eddington (basketball) and Busurind Rogers (track) earned All-America honors during the 1990s.
The 2009 Hall of Fame Class also includes Jack Overman, baseball player Eric Miller, football player Col. Bill Hollenbeck and runner Francis “Fritz” Snodgrass.
The 22nd class of inductees will be honored at a banquet on Sept. 4 and at halftime of the football game the next day. The honorees are selected by an eight-person committee of alumni and current athletic staff members.
Moorman, now the punter for the Buffalo Bills, left PSU in 1999 as the school’s most decorated male athlete in history. He averaged 43.97 yards per punt for his career and was the Gorillas’ first four-time All-American in football (1995-99), including first-team honors his junior and senior years.
In track, he earned 10 All-America honors, including three consecutive outdoor national championships in the 400 meters, and he won eight MIAA individual titles. He still holds the school record for the 110 high hurdles (13.81), and he’s second in the 400 hurdles (49.77). He also was an academic All-American six times and won the Ken B. Jones Award as the MIAA’s top male student-athlete in 1998 and 1999.
Eddington, who prepped at Columbus, was the Gorillas’ first NCAA Division II All-American in basketball.
Under new head coach Gene Iba, Eddington — at PSU as a baseball player — made the basketball team after an open tryout and proceeded to score 1,090 points — the highest two-year scoring total in school history. As a senior, Eddington averaged 17.2 points and 4.6 rebounds to lead the Gorillas to a 24-7 record and a Sweet 16 berth in the NCAA-II Tournament. He also lettered two years in baseball and pitched a 5-3 win over Minnesota State in the Gorillas’ first D-II regional appearance in 1997.
Rogers won the D-II heptathlon championship in 1991 and earned all-MIAA honors 20 times in her two-year career with the Gorillas, including 10 individual titles. She still holds school records in the heptathlon (5,258 points) and the long jump (20 feet, 3 3/4 inches), and she’s second in the high jump (5-7 3/4).
Rogers scored 66 points when the Gorillas won the 1991 MIAA outdoor crown. She won the high jump, long jump, triple jump, 100 hurdles and heptathlon and placed second in the 400 hurdles and javelin.
Overman, considered by many as the greatest fan ever for PSU athletics, has been involved with the school for eight decades. He was a yell leader for the Gorillas from 1936-39 before becoming student body president in 1940.
He returned to campus in 1951 to serve as the director of PSU’s Student Center, which was renamed in his honor after his retirement in 1984.
Hollenbeck was a four-year football letterman for the Gorillas from 1951-55, helping them to a CIC championship his senior year.
He served in the Army from 1956 until he retired at the rank of Colonel in 1981. He served two tours of Vietnam and two additional assignments in Germany. After his Army career, he served on the PSU faculty for 21 years, assuming the chair of the military science department in 1976. He was named assistant to the President in 1991, and 15 years later he was named director of the PSU Business and Technology Institute.
Miller played a big part as the Gorillas restarted their baseball program in the early 1990s. A three-time all-MIAA first baseman, he still holds the school record for hits (202) and he’s second in doubles (39), runs batted in (130), walks (85) and games played (173).
Snodgrass won four straight 880-yard conference titles from 1923-26 and ran on the mile relay team that won league titles in 1924-25. After college, he coached all sports at Pittsburg High School from 1931-43 before becoming head track coach at Wichita East from 1943-56, leading East to nine state track titles and four second places in those 13 years.
Snodgrass will be inducted into the hall of fame’s Legacy category, which was created in 2005 and focuses on athletes from the school’s first 50 years (1903-53).