MSSU Athletics Hall of Fame
Sallie Beard served MSSU as both coach and Athletics Director for 37 years. She created women’s athletics at Missouri Southern when she started and coached the first women’s basketball, softball, and tennis teams in 1974. Two years later, she added the women’s track and field program. She was twice named NAIA District 16 Women’s Track and Field Coach of the Year, in 1981 and again in 1983 when she led Southern to the district outdoor title. At the 1981 World University Games in Romania, she was an assistant coach for the U.S. team, and in 1983 she coached the North squad at the National Sports Festival.
For 25 years, she was the Women’s Athletics Director. In 2001, she was named the Athletics Director to oversee both men’s and women’s athletics programs, the first woman at MSSU and the first in the MIAA Conference to serve in that capacity. Under her direction, Missouri Southern athletes consistently ranked among the academic leaders in the MIAA. She also oversaw significant improvements to Fred G. Hughes Stadium and the Lee Kungle and Gene Wild softball fields.
Nationally, Beard served on numerous NCAA Division II committees. And most notably she served on the association-wide NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics, developing Title IX interpretive language for the Civil Rights Division of the federal Department of Justice. From 2005 to 2009, she was a member of the NCAA Division II Management Council. From 1999 to 2001, she served as MIAA Conference president, the first athletics director to be chosen for that position.
Beard has also been inducted into Joplin Sports Hall of Fame in 2004, the MIAA Hall of Fame (inaugural class) in 2010, and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2017. In 2014, she received the Nike Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators.
