BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – Former Southeast Missouri sports information director Ron Hines (posthumously) and softball coach Lana Richmond and former UT Martin tennis coach Dennis Taylor have been elected to the Ohio Valley Conference Hall of Fame.
The trio will be officially inducted at the annual OVC Honors Dinner which will be held on Thursday, May 28 in Franklin, Tennessee.
The Ohio Valley Conference Hall of Fame was organized in 1977 with the intent of honoring the coaches, administrators, faculty and staff who have been associated with the OVC for at least five years and provided extensive and outstanding service to the Conference. With the induction of this year's class, the membership will reach 103.
Hines, who passed away on March 16, 2026, helped bring publicity and notoriety to Southeast Missouri during his 29 years of service, retiring in 2009. He remarkably worked 851 consecutive men's basketball games; an all-time Division I record for an SID. Over the years, he wrote and produced 21 award-winning publications, including four judged "Best in the Nation" by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
Hines helped SEMO host numerous conference and national championships, including the 1983, 1984 and 1988 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field National Championships. He also served as the public address announcer for numerous events and a color commentator for the school's football and men's basketball radio broadcasts when the Redhawks were on the road.
What made Hines' career more special was his wife, Mary, who spent more than 25 years assisting him with statistics, media guides, game programs, posters and other publications. Mary passed away on August 23, 2012, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Ron and Mary were inducted as part of the 2012 SEMO Athletics Hall of Fame Class.
Prior to that, Hines received a Lifetime Achievement Award from CoSIDA. Hines is just the third full-time sports information director to be inducted into the OVC Hall of Fame.
Richmond served as Southeast Missouri State's head softball coach for 32 years (1982-2014), compiling a record of 884-710-4, establishing herself as the winningest coach in OVC history. Under her leadership, SEMO claimed five consecutive OVC regular-season championships (1995-99) and five OVC Tournament titles, earning five NCAA Tournament appearances.
In 1992, she successfully ushered SEMO softball into the NCAA Division I era, guiding the program seamlessly into a new level of competition. During its Division I membership in the OVC, her teams reached the 30-win mark 10 times. She became just the 42nd coach in NCAA softball history to achieve 800 career victories, reaching that milestone in 2010, and then earned her 600th Division I win in 2013.
Richmond was named OVC Coach of the Year five times (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2009) and her 1996 team produced one of the most dominant seasons in conference history, finishing 22-2 in OVC play and 39-9 overall. That team opened the season with 32 consecutive victories, the longest winning streak in program history.
She coached nine All-Americans, 37 first-team All-Conference selections, four OVC Players of the Year, three OVC Pitchers of the Year, and one OVC Freshman of the Year. Equally impressive was her commitment to academic achievement. Richmond's teams consistently ranked among the nation's top academic programs as recognized by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA). SEMO ranked in the NFCA Top 10 academically for six consecutive years, and the 2002 team achieved the second-highest team GPA in the nation.
She was inducted into the Southeast Missouri State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2020 and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.
Taylor served as UT Martin's head tennis coach for 33 years, 27 of which came while members of the OVC. Coaching both the men's and women's programs, he reached the 500-win milestone in 2016 and retired after the 2019 fall semester with 535 career victories – then the fifth-most wins amongst active NCAA Division I head women's tennis coaches.
His seven OVC Coach of the Year awards are still a league record (two more than anybody else dating back to the inception of the award in 1977) as his teams combined to nab six OVC championships. A truly consistent winner, Taylor's women's squad appeared in the OVC Championship tournament a whopping 26 times in his 27 seasons at the helm.
Fresh off the heels of producing a pair of NCAA Division II men's national champions in 1991, it didn't take Taylor long to get acclimated to the NCAA Division I ranks. He guided the women's team to back-to-back OVC titles in 1994 and 1995 – UT Martin's second and third years as members of Division I. He also led the Skyhawk women to an OVC championship and first-ever berth in the NCAA Division I Tennis Regional in 2005 before adding regular season crowns in 2006, 2011 and 2016.
Overall, Taylor coached 13 All-Americans, five OVC Players of the Year, three OVC Freshmen of the Year and 74 all-conference honorees. Taylor was inducted into the UT Martin Athletics Hall of Fame in 2021 – joining nine of his former student-athletes.
As successful as Taylor's on-court accomplishments were, his team's academic achievements were equally impressive. His teams routinely produced a 3.75 team GPA or higher while five of his student-athletes were named OVC Scholar-Athletes. Four of his squads (two men's, two women's) generated OVC Team Academic Awards while his Skyhawk women's team received national recognition by the NCAA in 2014 as all eight players sported a 3.5 GPA or higher.
