Beikirch to Join RSC Athletic Hall of Fame This October
ALBANY, N.Y. – Russell Sage College is proud to announce that its Athletics Hall of Fame will increase by three individuals and one team when Kristen Beikirch (Softball), Megan Bowman (Women's Basketball), Ann King (Athletic Communications), and the 2013-2014 Women's Basketball Team are inducted this October.
ALBANY, N.Y. – Russell Sage College is proud to announce that its Athletics Hall of Fame will increase by three individuals and one team when Kristen Beikirch (Softball), Megan Bowman (Women's Basketball), Ann King (Athletic Communications), and the 2013-2014 Women's Basketball Team are inducted this October.
This year's ceremony will take place on Sunday, October 5 at 10:00 AM at Bush Memorial, located on the Troy campus.
Beikirch, nominated by the Skyline Conference for the 2014-2015 NCAA Woman of the Year Award, helped rewrite the softball program record book between 2012-2015. The two-time All-Region selection, the first Gator Softball player to earn All-Conference honors all four years, set school career records for games played, at bats, hits, runs, and stolen bases. She is the lone Gator to surpass 200 career hits and currently is fifth all-time with a .414 career batting average.
The 2013 Skyline Conference Player of the Year and the 2012 Skyline Rookie of the Year also established single-season program records for hits, runs scored and stolen bases.
She was also the College's first three-time CoSIDA (now College Sports Communicators) Academic All-American, an honor that the 2013-2014 ECAC Division III Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year, earned in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
Bowman dished out a program-record 458 assists between 2011-2015. She closed her career third with 1,080 career points, now sixth, and second with 258 steals. The guard, who owns the top two spots for assists by a Gator in a season, made the 2013-2014 D3Hoops.com All-Region third-team. Bowman, a two-time first-team All-Skyline Conference pick, was chosen the 2014 Skyline Conference Tournament Most Outstanding Player in helping RSC make the NCAA Tournament for the first time.
The 2013-2014 Women's Basketball team was the first RSC hoops squad to win a Conference Championship when it captured the Skyline Conference title on its home court. The Gators, which set a program single-season record for wins with 17, advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history. Bowman, the 2014 Skyline Tournament Most Outstanding Player, was voted first-team All-Conference, while guard Frankie Pearson was the Conference's Rookie of the Year and a second-team All-Skyline performer. Bowman paced RSC in scoring (12.7 points per-game), assists (142) and steals (74), while forward Amie Jefferson had team-highs of 195 rebounds and 25 blocked shots.
Telling the story of these Hall of Fame inductees and other Gators for 15 years was Ann King. The legend in the Sports Information/Athletic Communications field spent 37 years as a sports information director, the final 15 of which were here at RSC.
King, recognized as one of the Empire 8 Conference's legends as part of its 25th Anniversary celebration in 2023-2024, was extremely active with CSC, formerly known as CoSIDA, the profession's national organization. She was elected to the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in 2006 and was named the first recipient of the organization's Warren Berg Award in 2003. King was also selected as the 2018 recipient of the CoSIDA Mary Jo Haverbeck Award, which is presented annually to a CoSIDA member who is a pioneer in the field of sports information who has mentored and helped improve the level of ethnic and gender diversity within CoSIDA.
Prior to coming to RSC as the institution's first full-time SID in the summer of 2009, King, who was posthumously awarded the Division III Commissioner's Association Daniel T. Dutcher Meritorious Service Award at the 2024 NCAA Convention, spent 17 and a half years as SID at The College of New Jersey and six years as SID at her alma mater, Drew University.
Since its inaugural class in 1993, Russell Sage College Athletics has inducted 53 individuals and two teams into its Hall of Fame.
