The NCAA News - News and Features

January 12, 1998

NCAA CONVENTION -- Silver Anniversary Awards

The Silver Anniversary Award recognizes former student-athletes who have distinguished themselves since completing their college athletics careers 25 years ago. The honorees will be recognized January 11 during the NCAA honors dinner.

Gary Hall

Indiana University, Bloomington

Swimming

A seven-time NCAA champion for the Hoosiers, Hall won the NCAA Today's Top Five Award and was awarded an NCAA postgraduate scholarship. During his collegiate career, he also won 10 Big Ten Conference individual championships and 23 national AAU titles.

Captain of the 1972 and 1976 United States men's Olympic swim teams, he won silver and bronze medals at the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Games. Hall set nine individual world records in three different events -- butterfly, backstroke and individual medley -- from 1968 to 1972.

Hall went on to graduate from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine after completing his undergraduate degree at Indiana. Now operating the Gary Hall Eye Surgery Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona, he has become a much-sought-after lecturer at eyesight symposiums.

Lawrie Mifflin

Yale University

Field hockey

Initiating the women's field hockey program at Yale, Mifflin became the first captain of the first varsity women's team.

Graduating magna cum laude in the first class of women at Yale in 1973, she went on to work as a reporter for The New York Times. In 1976, she became the first woman sportswriter for the New York Daily News. Mifflin has covered four Olympics and two World Cup soccer tournaments. She is currently a culture reporter for the Times.

As creator and director of The New York Times Work-Life Services Office, she formulated, codified and promoted new family-friendly and flexible work policies for the Times.

Mifflin serves on the executive committee for the Parents Association of the New York City Laboratory School and the executive board for the Brooklyn Region of the American Youth Soccer Organization.

Drew Pearson

University of Tulsa

Football

As a sophomore quarterback at Tulsa, Pearson completed 36 of 86 passes for 423 yards and one touchdown. During his junior season, switching to wide receiver, he caught 22 passes for 429 yards and three touchdowns. Pearson then led the Golden Hurricanes his senior year with 33 catches for 690 yards and five touchdowns.

In an 11-year professional career with the Dallas Cowboys, he went to three Super Bowls and had 489 career receptions for 7,822 yards and 48 touchdowns. He was All-Pro in 1974, 1976 and 1977. In 1980, he was voted the Cowboys' NFL Man of the Year by fans.

Pearson is chairman of the board of Drew Pearson Marketing, a $50 million company that manufactures and distributes officially licensed pro sports headwear for adults and children.

He serves on the NFL Commissioner's Former Player Advisory Committee and Advisory Board of Wednesday's Child. He is a member of the Rainbow Coalition for Fairness in Athletics Commission.

Cynthia Potter

Indiana University, Bloomington

Diving

Potter has won the most national diving championships of any woman, with 28, and
is second overall only to Greg Lougainis. She also was a member of four U.S. Olympic diving teams (1968, 1972, 1976 and 1980) and won a bronze medal in 1976. From 1970 to 1972, Potter won World Diver of the Year honors while diving at Indiana.

She won more than 20 gold medals in international world diving competition between 1967 and 1980. In 1987, she was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame and in 1989 into the Indiana University Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame.

Serving as a television commentator since 1983, Potter has worked at the Olympics, NCAA swimming and diving championships and Goodwill Games. From 1984 to 1996, she was head men's and women's diving coach at the University of Arizona and was named Pacific-10 Conference coach of the year in 1993.

Potter was a member of the executive board for the U.S. Olympic Committee and currently serves as trustee and chair of the U.S. Diving Foundation.

Sally K. Ride

Stanford University

Tennis

A two-sport athlete, Ride also played rugby at Stanford and helped start the school's club team in that sport. Before transferring to Stanford, she played field hockey, basketball and tennis at Swarthmore College.

After graduating in 1973 with a bachelor of science degree in physics and a bachelor of arts in English, Ride earned a master of science degree and doctorate at Stanford.

In 1978, Ride was selected for astronaut training. As a member of the Challenger space shuttle crew in June 1983 and October 1984, Ride became the first American woman to travel in space. In June 1985, Ride was assigned to a third space shuttle flight, but training for that flight was interrupted in January 1986 by the accident that destroyed Challenger. She subsequently served on the Presidential Commission that was convened to investigate the accident. Ride then was assigned to Washington, D.C., as assistant to the NASA administrator for long-range planing.

Ride is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the California Space Institute.

Harry Smith

Central College (Iowa)

Football

Smith was a three-year starter at defensive tackle for Central (Iowa). The team finished 24-11 during his four-year career.

At Central, Smith also worked at the campus radio station and hosted his own show. In addition, he was an active participant in theater productions, sang in the a cappella choir and was residence-hall advisor. He spent the summer of 1972 in Taiwan teaching English though a program sponsored by the Presbyterian church, and was a member of Beta Kappa Epsilon and the campus church board.

After graduating from Central, Smith hosted radio talk shows before becoming a reporter in 1985 at KMGH in Denver. In 1986, he moved to Dallas as a correspondent for CBS News. Smith became co-anchor of "CBS This Morning" in 1987.

Smith now can be seen as a correspondent on CBS News and in his weekly feature, "Travels with Harry," on CBS Evening News. He also hosts a series of documentaries for the History Channel and the "Biography" series on the A&E cable channel.

Smith has won three Emmy Awards for reporting.