By Jim Henry
Former Pittsburg State women’s basketball player Lizzy Jeronimus and football coach/athletics director Dennis Franchione were inducted into the MIAA Hall of Fame on Monday night during the conference’s Awards Celebration at the Nelson-Atkins Museum auditorium in Kansas City, Mo.
Jeronimus, from Lenexa, Kan., became PSU’s first women’s basketball four-time All-American from 2012-16. She started 124 games and finished her career as the school’s leading scorer (2,226 points) and rebounder (838 rebounds).
As a freshman, she helped the Gorillas to a 27-6 record and the program’s first Elite Eight appearance. The Gorillas also made NCAA Tournament appearances in 2014 and 2015. Jeronimus was a first-team All-American in her junior season and received honorable mention in her other three seasons.
Franchione was the Gorillas’ football coach from 1985-89, directing them to a 53-6 record, five conference championships (four CSIC, one MIAA) and five playoff appearances (four NAIA, one NCAA Division II).
He was the athletics director in 1989 when the school transitioned from the NAIA to NCAA Division II and the MIAA.
After the 1989 season, Franchione left PSU to become head coach at Division I Southwest Texas State (now Texas State). That marked the beginning of a 23-year career at the Division I level with stops at New Mexico, TCU, Alabama, Texas A&M and Texas State again. In all, he won 213 games in a 30-year career that included nine conference championships and four Division I bowl victories.
The Gorillas also received the MIAA Commissioner’s Cup for the fifth consecutive year. PSU President Dr. Thomas Newsom and athletics director Anthony Crespino accepted the league’s all-sports trophy.
Among the Gorillas’ 14 sports, eight teams won or shared the MIAA championship – men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field, women’s cross country, football, women’s soccer and baseball.
Two Gorillas – senior pole vaulter Belle Peters and junior distance runner Dylan Sprecker – were introduced as finalists for the Ken B. Jones Award, which recognizes the female and male student-athletes of the year. Softball player Rylee Lemos and wrestler Gabe Johnson, both from Central Oklahoma, won the awards.
Others inducted into the Hall of Fame were Missouri Southern’s Kim Shank Reed (women’s cross country/track and field), Central Missouri’s Justin Yoder (men’s golf) and Paul Engelmann (faculty athletics representative), Emporia State’s Miranda Campbell (softball) and Josh Honeycutt (men’s track and field), Southwest Baptist’s Natalie O’Keefe Goatley (women’s track and field), Washburn’s Jessica Mainz (women’s soccer and basketball), Ron McHenry (women’s basketball coach), the 2000-01 national runner-up men’s basketball team and former MIAA men’s basketball official Terry Oglesby.
