National prep sports group honors Lakewood woman

LAKEWOOD – One of the leading figures in Colorado’s high school sports, Alice Barron, entered the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Hall of Fame when that group installed its inaugural class of honorees Tuesday night in Texas.

Barron, who lives in Lakewood, was instrumental in bringing the Jefferson County School District’s women’s sports program into prominence by fighting successfully to convince the school board to approve the first budgeted funding for women’s teams.

In 1972 – after 10 years of leadership as a coach in her native Texas and then, in 1967, at Golden High School – Barron took over as Jeffco’s coordinator of athletics and served in that position until her retirement in 1990. In her district-wide role, Barron presented the first girls athletic budget to the Jefferson County Board of Education. It was adopted in 1968.

Barron took the Jefferson County girls program from no sports in 1967 to 11 sports in 1989 when she secured a $1 million budget. From 1975 to 1989, Jefferson County girls programs won 31 of 95 Class 3A and 4A state championships.

She was the first woman to serve on the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) Board of Control. In addition, she directed or co-directed 36 CHSAA state tournaments, including 15 basketball championships, during a 22-year period. She served 10 years on the executive board of the Colorado Athletic Directors Association, which included a term as president.

Her induction into the NIAAA Hall of Fame is a fitting tribute, said Bert Borgmann, CHSAA assistant commissioner.

“That’s really exciting. Her history in Colorado is amazing,” Borgmann said. “She’s one of the best. She was in the inaugural class of CHSSA and now she’s in the inaugural class there (NIAAA).”

Another Colorado high school sports leader, former Denver Public Schools director of athletics and student activities Rob Conklin, also is part of the NIAAA inaugural Hall of Fame Class.

During his 33-year professional career in Colorado, Conklin also coached at Denver South High School, where he was vice principal and athletic director from 1966 to 1971. Conklin later served 17 years directing the district’s athletics and student activities.

After retiring in 1990, Conklin remained active in the school district for a number of years as the hearing officer for expulsions.

He was president of the Colorado High School Activities Association in 1985-86 and served on the CHSAA Executive Committee for nine years. He also was chairman of the CHSAA State Wrestling Committee, director of a number of state tournaments and was president of the Colorado High School Athletic Directors Association.

Conklin served on the organizing committee that developed the NIAAA in 1977 and was the NIAAA’s first president for two years from 1977 to 1979.

“She (Barron) and Rob Conklin both are going in tonight and they are both just tremendous people and very important to Colorado’s sports history,” Bergmann said.

Barron carved her way through one glass ceiling after another. And while she was paving the way for future generations of female athletes, she was achieving milestones and setting records that have yet to be broken.

In the 1950s, two things were king in the state of Texas: oil and high school football. Most schools didn’t even allow girls to play sports, much less have organized programs. It would take Congress’ passing of Title IX in 1972 to level the playing field.

Consider that in 1972, just before the measure passed there were 295,000 girls participating in high school sports – across the nation, roughly one in 27. By 2004, an estimated 2.8 million girls, or approximately one in three, were enrolled in interscholastic athletics.

And in 1956, when a young Alice “Cookie” Barron was running the courts, fields and tracks in Georgetown, Texas, the numbers were much, much smaller.

Barron, described by Texas newspapers of the day as the “Babe Zaharias” of Georgetown, earned 16 letters in four sports. When she graduated from high school, she signed on with a full scholarship to Wayland Baptist University in the equally small town of Plainview, Texas, something unheard of in those days.

In four years at Wayland, Barron helped build the Lady Queens, named after a sponsorship in the 1940s by Harvest Queen Mill, into a national powerhouse. Her basketball teams won 104 consecutive games and four national AAU championships. She was a member of the U.S. women’s basketball team that won the World Tournament in Brazil in 1957, beating the Russians. And, she was a first-team AAU All-American.

Wayland’s women’s basketball program has the distinction of being the only women’s team to win 1,300 games.

In 1991 Wayland Baptist began planning for a Hall of Fame. Barron wasn’t it its inaugural class, but she wasn’t far behind. In 1995, the Hall’s fourth induction year, Barron was atop the list.

Her Tuesday night induction into the NIAAA’s Hall of Fame was conducted in Grapevine, Texas, just a few hours from her childhood home and the origins of her trail-blazing career.