Jan. 14, 2016
By Jerome Boettcher | Subscribe to Commodore Nation | 2015 Hall of Fame Class
Surprise, humility, gratitude and excitement filled Aleke Tsoubanos when athletic director David Williams called to tell her she was being inducted into the Vanderbilt Athletics Hall of Fame.
Then the Vanderbilt women’s tennis great heard the rest of the 2015 class.
“When I caught wind of who else was going to be in the class my first thought was, ‘Wow, that is a really impressive class,'” said Tsoubanos, now the associate head coach for the women’s tennis team. “It had nothing to do with me being in it. It is certainly going to be a memorable group and there are a lot of great memories that came out of the student-athletes and the administrator who were in this group.”
The 2015 Hall of Fame class features some of the best Commodores to ever put on a uniform. The two that carry the most notoriety are Cy Young Award winner David Price and NFL quarterback Jay Cutler.
Then there is Tsoubanos, a three-time All-American doubles player who helped lead the Commodores to the 2002 NCAA Championships match. Marina Alex was a two-time SEC Golfer of the Year who won the 2010 SEC individual championship. In 1978, women’s basketball standout Cathy Bender was the first African-American woman to receive a full athletic scholarship at Vanderbilt.
Jeff Fosnes was a two-time First Team All-SEC selection on the basketball court and helped the Commodores to the 1974 SEC Championship. All-American halfback Charley Horton was a valuable member of the 1955 Gator Bowl championship team.
Head coach Larry Schmittou helped get the baseball program off the ground, leading the ‘Dores to back-to-back SEC Championships in 1973-74. And Stella Vaughn was a pioneer for women’s athletics at Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt grad organized the first women’s basketball team nearly 120 years ago and was the school’s physical education director and first female instructor in 1896.
“We believe we always have a class that has real Star Power,” Williams said. “Certainly, this class has as much if not more Star Power than any of the classes we’ve been able to induct into the Hall of Fame.”
The 2015 class will be enshrined at the Hall of Fame Dinner on Jan. 22 at the Vanderbilt Student Life Center.
Like Tsoubanos, Bender, Fosnes, Price and Schmittou, who were all at the press conference announcing the class in November, called the enshrinement a great honor.
Williams said the feeling is mutual.
“It is so very interesting because everybody I call seems to be so very honored that we selected them,” he said. “I’m always having to tell them, ‘No, we’re the ones who are honored. It is the contributions you have given to our university and athletics department that gives us this opportunity to honor you.'”
Price helped put the Vanderbilt baseball program on the map.
The future No. 1 draft pick was the consensus national player of the year in 2007, the same year Vanderbilt swept the SEC regular season and tournament championships and received the top seed in the NCAA Tournament.
The Murfreesboro native said being inducted into his school’s hall of fame ranks up there with winning the 2012 Cy Young Award and being named a six-time All-Star.
“You can be a terrible person and win those type of awards, as bad as that is to say,” he said. “Something that deals with character and stuff along those lines, that is what’s special. Baseball is going to end for me at some point. Me living and me being a good person, doing stuff the right way that is what is going to carry me through the rest of my life. That is the stuff I cherish, so this is definitely very special.”
For Bender, Vanderbilt offered an opportunity that extended beyond just her.
Bender and her Mt. Juliet High School basketball teammate Sheila Johansson were the first female athletes to receive full athletic scholarships at Vanderbilt. The scholarship allowed Bender to be the first of her eight siblings to go to college.
“Because of that scholarship, my three siblings that followed me all went to college,” she said. “It was not only great for me but it was great for my family. The exposure to my community was awesome so I’m very appreciative of that.”
Fosnes chose Vanderbilt and the basketball program over playing football at Notre Dame. In addition to being a two-time All-SEC selection and graduating as the program’s second-leading scorer, he was a two-time Academic All-American.
He spent eight years at Vanderbilt, attending medical school and choosing a profession in medicine over playing in the NBA.
“It is a very special place,” Fosnes said. “Athletically, it was a great time when we had the opportunity to play in the 70s. It was kind of the only game in town. It was great to be part of some of those great teams. Undergraduate was serious, medical school was pretty serious (laughs). So we grew some roots.”
When Schmittou received the phone call from Williams, he was thrilled to be going into the hall of fame, and happy that Vanderbilt administrators knew “I was still alive.”
“I’ve been honored a few other times at a few other things,” he said, “but I was really surprised that they looked back in old history and welcomed the great ballplayers I had. It’s because of them, not because of me.”
Schmittou actually took a pay cut when he left Goodlettsville High School to become Vanderbilt’s head baseball coach in addition to the football team’s top recruiter in 1968. He didn’t have any scholarships to give when he started. He relied on friends to serve as part-time assistant coaches in addition to their day jobs.
And all Schmittou did in his 11 years at the helm was lead Vanderbilt to four SEC Eastern Division crowns, two SEC championships, set the league record for wins (37) in a season and win more than 300 games.
“I had such great guys that worked so hard, outperformed some of (their opponents),” Schmittou said. “Then I was able to get football players, basketball players like Jeff Peeples and built my team around pitching. I had 11 great years. I wouldn’t give anything for it.”
Tsoubanos arrived in Nashville from her hometown of St. Louis in 2000.
The three-time All-American holds the school record for most career doubles victories (119), consecutive doubles matches won (15) and best doubles winning percentage (82 percent). The natural leader helped guide the Commodores to an Elite Eight, Final Four and the NCAA Championship match in 2002 – the farthest any Vanderbilt athletics team had reached to that point.
After she graduated, she played World Team Tennis before rejoining the Commodores when head coach Geoff Macdonald hired as associate head coach in 2007. In May, she helped lead the program to the pinnacle of the sport – the national championship.
“This has felt like home for me,” Tsoubanos said of Vanderbilt. “I’m not from Middle Tennessee but I was a student-athlete for four years, I trained here for a year after I graduated and I’ve now been back, this is my ninth season (as a coach). It really does feel like home. It is so comfortable here. I feel extremely invested as a coach.
“I’m fortunate. Not many people are able to play a sport as a student-athlete and then go back and coach at the same university. It is really special and a blessing for me to be here.”
