Three coaches and two players will be added to the Logan County Athletic Association Hall of Fame in late January. Actually, one of them is both a former player and coach.
The inductees between Clashes of the Cats on Jan. 28 will be basketball player and coach Finley Baird, coaches David Billingsley and the late Steve Eans, volleyball player Becca Grayson, and baseball player Zak Danks.
Here’s a look at the credentials of this special quintet:
Finley Baird (Class of 1983) goes in as both an outstanding athlete and coach. As a junior, she was a key part of Coach Tim Owens’ district champion and regional semifinalist team in 1982. The Auburn Lady Tigers ended Olmstead’s seven-year run as 13th District champions. That game in the regional semifinals was the last ever played by a non-consolidated Logan County girls basketball team. Averaging almost 15 points per game, she was runner-up for MVP in voting for all-county, trailing only Russellville’s Libby Martin.
The next year she was a leader of Coach Jim Thompson’s first Logan County High School team and was a starter in the first game ever played by a consolidated Logan County team. The Lady Cougars won the district championship, highlighted by Baird’s winning goal with three seconds remaining against Russellville. They reached the regional finals before losing to Warren Central, which went on to win the state championship. Baird led the Lady Cougars in assists during their first season.
Baird was a solid player for Lindsey Wilson Coach Steve Riley when it was still a junior college. Then as a walk-on she made Coach Paul Sanderford’s 1986 WKU team, which won the East Region and played in the Final Four at Rupp Arena. One of her teammates was All-American and fellow Logan Hall of Famer Lillie Mason of Olmstead.
After a distinguished career working in student recruitment at WKU, she became a Central Office staffer with the Logan County Schools, a position she still holds. She also was named head coach of the Lady Cougars and put together an outstanding record. Check out these statistics:
- Overall 126-94
- 76-53 in regional games
- 49-9 in 13th District play
- 17-7 in postseason
- 12-1 in 13th District Tournament play
- Six 13th District Championships
- Five 4th Regional Tournament Semifinals
David Billingsley
From 1978-91, David Billingsley was a standout coach in the Logan County School System. He began his career at Lewisburg High School as head baseball and girls basketball coach. During the last three years of LHS, he was boys basketball coach along with baseball. His Rangers won two district baseball championship.
When five schools consolidated into Logan County High School in the fall of 1982, he was named head baseball coach and assistant basketball coach for the Cougars. He was a member of the coaching staff of the 1984 boys state basketball champions and is already in the Hall of Fame as a part of that team. He was also an assistant football coach in 1988 and ’89 when Coach Stumpy Baker’s Cougars won district championships.
He was highly successful as the Cougar baseball coach for nine seasons. The Cougars won 125 games and the district championship six of those seasons. The 1989 team won the regional championship and a game at state. One of the seniors, Mark Thompson, became the University of Kentucky’s Pitcher of the Year and went on to play Major League Baseball several years.
Billingsley coached numerous Russellville and Logan County athletes in American Legion and Connie Mack summer travel baseball as well as Babe Ruth. His ARCO A’s may have been the greatest summer baseball teams ever assembled here.
He estimates the number of his games as head coach or an assistant to be over 800 high school games and over 200 summer games while in Logan County.
After leaving Logan, he was an administrator in the Henderson County Schools before being named executive director of the Kentucky Office of Career & Technical Education. He retired in 2007 but has continued coaching on a part-time basis in summer ball and the Woodford and Jessamine county schools.
He is married to the former Amy Lynch, a graduate of Russellville High School. Their grown children Kresta and Kent have made them grandparents of five. They live in the Lexington area.
Here’s a look at his Cougar baseball teams:
1983: 14-6-1, District Champion, Regional Semifinalist
Seniors: Kelly Allen, Keith McReynolds, Eric Meguiar, Richey Powell
1984: 15-7, District Champion
Seniors: Brett Angel, Karl Wayne Dawson, Bryan Estes, Danny Pendleton, Roger Rainwater, Greg Scott
1985: 18-7-1, District Champion, Regional Semifinalist
Seniors: Kevin Hickman, Kyle Hines, Brent Lee, Robby McLellan, Robby Powell
1986: 15-11, District Champion
Seniors: Keith Jones, Chris Taylor, Kevin White, Brett Wooden, Jay Wright, John York
1987: 15-13
Seniors: Zeke O’Neill, Michael Rogers, Ron Sams, David Woodall
1988: Coach Billingsley,11-17-1
No Seniors
1989: 20-12, District Champion, Regional Champion, State Quarterfinalist
Seniors: Lamont Cross, Chip Devasier, Jason Goodman, Jon Hollinsworth, Chris Johnson, Jeff Taylor, Mark Thompson
1990: 17-12-1, District Champion, Regional Semifinalist
Seniors: Alan Marksberry, Jeff Taylor, Jermaine Wells, Brian White, Mitch Whitescarver
1991: 19-12, District Runner-up
Seniors: Doug Binkley, Chris Hines, Ethan Meguiar, Chad Roberson, Jerry Rust
Billingsley is the fourth member of that state champion basketball program to be inducted into the Hall of Fame a second time. The others are Head Coach Gerald Sinclair and players Fred Tisdale and Stacy Mason. Principal Howard Gorrell and Athletic Director Bob Birdwhistell are also Hall of Famers
Steve Eans
A former Daviess County High School football player who majored in Industrial Arts at WKU, Steve Eansbeat considerable odds to succeed as the founding coach of Cougar football. He had not played college football and he didn’t decide to teach until the economy made his first choice of a career—house construction—a gamble. The late Superintendent Merle Johnson made Eans the first football coach because he could also teach industrial arts, one of the school’s biggest programs.
In that first year of LCHS as a school, Eans was the only football coach and the only ‘shop’ teacher. His football duties that first year were more as a teacher than a coach. Many of the guys wanting to play football had never seen a game in person, since the five schools which had consolidated into LCHS didn’t field football teams. In the early years, he often was without key players during practice because they were cutting tobacco on their family farms. Their dads had never been around football for the most part.
The second year of the school’s and football’s existence in the county school system, Eans fielded a junior varsity football team which won a game against Allen County-Scottsville. The third year, they became a varsity team and won a game against Pulaksi County.
In the fourth year, it all came together with the Logan County Cougars winning an astounding eight football games. Two years later, he voluntarily turned the program over to his assistant coach, the legendary Stumpy Baker.
Many of the players Eans coached have become highly successful adults. Running back Lee Proctor has coached more Cougar games than anyone else. Proctor was the first Cougar to play NCAA football. Ron Sams and Doug Gloyd played college football. Mark Thompson pitched for the University of Kentucky and in the major leagues. Eans’ first quarterback, Kyle Hines, has been a leader in industrial development. Eans’ second quarterback, Chris Taylor, played four years of college baseball, as did his brother Jeff. His third quarterback, Tyrone Babb, played four years of college basketball and is also in the LCHS Athletic Hall of Fame.
Sams is a businessman and Gloyd became a coach and an athletic director. Michael ‘Pooh’ Elliott is a member of the Cougars’ highly successful football coaching staff. Darnell Cross coached a number of years on the Russellville football staff. Lineman George Fugate is an agri-businessman and fellow lineman Chris Penrod has been a career military officer. Dr. David Woodall is a respected veterinarian and was a leader in making the Logan County Ag Arena a reality.
Steve Eans was the last original member of the Logan County High School faculty and administration to retire. That came in 2013, a total of 31 years after he came to Logan County to start football and industrial arts programs. He died a year ago next week.
Zak Danks
Franklin-Simpson had dominated 13th District Baseball since being moved from the 14th District until ZaK Danks’ senior year in 2000. Danks was a dominating pitcher and smooth-fielding first baseman, who played huge roles in the Cougars not only getting their first regular season win against the Cats but also sweeping the two-game set and then beating F-S for the district championship. Behind the pitching of Danks and Aaron Johnson, the Cougars reached the regional final.
Logan Hall of Famer Greg Shelton was nearing the end of his ultra-successful run as the Wildcat coach, and he wasn’t about to let Ethan Meguiar, who was just in his fourth year as the Cougar coach, beat him four times in a season. The Wildcats won the regional championship game at Greg Shelton Field.
Danks went 23-6 overall in his four-year career on the Cougar mound. He was 9-3 his senior season with a 2.28 earned run average, 96 strikeouts and 10 complete games. He was all-district and all-region. And it was Zak Danks who showed future Cougars that wins over Franklin are very possible and gave momentum to the 400-plus-wins (and still going strong) state Hall of Fame coaching career of Ethan Meguiar.
He earned a berth on the University of Kentucky pitching staff as a freshman but a serious injury ended his playing career.
Zak Danks turned his attention to academics and earned his degree in Natural Resource and Conservation Management. After that, he received his Master of Science in Wildlife Biology and Management from the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse.
Danks’ research on the moose of New York State and Maine has been published in top scientific journals. It involved complex data analysis and statistics as to why there are so many car crashes involving moose in that area. Other areas of study include the radio-tracking of deer, black bears, and elk; monitoring songbird and small mammals; and canoeing the beautiful Adirondack rivers and lakes searching for loons and invasive plants.
Zak Danks has been employed by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife as a wildlife biologist since 2007. He coordinates statewide management of wild turkeys and ruffed grouse from agency headquarters in Frankfort. He and his wife Elizabeth, daughters Lucy (11) and Ruby (8) and nephew Brayden Holley (9) live in Versailles. Elizabeth is an environmental scientist at the Kentucky Division of Water and lab manager/instructor at Midway University.
Becca Grayson
Lady Cougar volleyball emerged from the shadows into perpetual regional contention during the four years Becca Grayson (Class of 2007) started for teams led by coaches Tina Baker, Steven Lyne and Rob Imlay. Her digs and assists were the catalyst for the still-going district win streak.
In the 12th game of her career (Logan middle schools weren’t playing volleyball then), the Lady Cougars’ record dropped to 4-8 with a 25-18, 25-22 loss to district rival Franklin-Simpson. The Lady Cougars lost to F-S again in the district tournament, but then the finals were best two of three. Logan won those next two matches for the district championship.
Then the Lady Cougars shocked the region by winning two matches at the regional tournament before losing to Barren County 25-20, 29-27 in the finals at Greenwood.
By the end of Grayson’s freshman season, the Lady Cougars had district championship and regional runner-up trophies and a winning record. Their record was third best in the region.
On Aug. 17, 2004, the Lady Cougars lost in three sets to Franklin to start Grayson’s sophomore season. They haven’t lost a district match in the 17-plus years since that date.
In eight of their last nine matches, the Lady Cougars won 2-0, not dropping a single set. Along the way, they won the district championship and two more matches at region, including sweeping their regional finals opponent from the season before, Barren County, in the semifinals. In the regional finals for the second straight year, they lost to Greenwood.
That year—with Becca Grayson piling up digs and assists, Logan County finished with the region’s top record at 29-8.
For the third straight season, the Lady Cougars reached the regional finals in 2005. This time, it was played at LCHS. Again the opponent in the finals was Greenwood, and the Lady Gators won the championship 25-22, 25-20. The Lady Cougars had a 28-7 record, second best in the region.
What do you do for an encore after reaching the regional finals three straight years? Grayson and the Lady Cougars did it again. Among their 30 wins were another district championship and yet another berth in the regional finals. Once again, Greenwood beat them for the championship, but in Grayson’s last match as a Lady Cougar the 2006 Lady Cougars won a set in the finals, 25-19 in the opener.
Logan finished 30-6 for the second-best record in the region. In five tournaments, they went 14-3.
In Becca Grayson’s four years as a starter, the Logan County Lady Cougars fashioned a 106-38 record overall, 69-17 in the region, 31-3 in the district, and 17-5 in the postseason with four district championships and four regional runner-up trophies.
The constant factors were the coaching staff and Becca Grayson, who established team records for assists.
Grayson went on to be a regular for Kentucky Wesleyan volleyball for four seasons. Wesleyan is an NCAA Division II team.
She is now Dr. Rebecca Grayson, holding the Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from the prestigious Washington University in St. Louis. She currently does outpatient therapy in Winchester, Va.