FOOTBALL Lyon bringing back program
In an effort to boost enrollment, Lyon College will reinstate something it hasn’t had in more than 60 years: A football team.
The school plans a 1 p.m. news conference Thursday at Edwards Commons on its Batesville campus to announce that it is aiming to field a football team in 2015.
It will be the first time Lyon, a private liberal arts school with an undergraduate enrollment of about 600, has fielded a football team since 1951.
Athletic Director Kevin Jenkins was on vacation and unavailable for comment Tuesday, but the school’s sports information director, John Krueger, said the reinstatement of football was approved Monday during a board of trustees meeting.
Krueger said Lyon is hoping to raise its enrollment to around 800 in the next couple of years, and officials hope a football team will attract up to 45 students to campus next fall and close to 100 by the time it begins play in 2015.
Krueger said Lyon won’t construct a new stadium. It will play games at Batesville High School’s Pioneer Stadium, about two miles south of Lyon’s campus.
Lyon hope to build a fieldhouse to house coach’s offices and a weight room, but next on the agenda is hiring a coach, which Krueger said the school hopes to do by the end of this summer.
The addition of football will bring the school’s total number of sports programs to 10. It will be the 13th college in Arkansas to have a football team. Hendrix will begin play this fall for the first time since 1960.
Lyon competes in the NAIA’s American Midwest Conference.
- Troy Schulte
Swanson a preseason All-American
Arkansas center Travis Swanson was named Tuesday as a second-team preseason All-American by Athlon Sports.
The senior from Kingswood, Texas, has started all 38 games of his Arkansas career and last season was named second-team All-SEC. Swanson also was named to the watch list for the Rimington Trophy, which is given to the nation’s top center, for the third consecutive season.
Swanson is a first-team preseason All-SEC choice by Athlon’s.
The Razorbacks open the season Aug. 31 against Louisiana-Lafayette at Reynolds Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.
- Tom Murphy
MISCELLANEOUS Hogs AD Headliner of the Year
Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long will be honored as the Arkansas Headliner of the Year at the Arkansas Press Association’s annual honors banquet Friday night at the Inn of the Ozarks convention center in Eureka Springs.
Long said in a news release that he’s “humbled to be included in a long list of distinguished Arkansans” as he joins of group of previous award winners that include Hillary Clinton, Sam Walton, Jack Stephens, Wesley Clark, Frank Broyles and Alice Walton.
Sports, Pages 23 on 06/26/2013