Dr. Donald Boydston of Southern Illinois enters the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame as an honoree in The Valley’s Lifetime Achievement category. The Lifetime Achievement category honors, when appropriate, former players, coaches, administrators or alumni who competed at, worked for or attended a current league school.
Boydston was instrumental in creating winning athletic teams at Southern Illinois during the 1960s. Becoming SIU’s director of athletics in 1957, Boydston began a rejuvenation project which paid immediate dividends. His statement that, “there are no minor sports at Southern,” brought pride to sports like swimming, gymnastics, tennis, wrestling and golf.
The ten-sport program at SIU compiled a composite 1,531-594-17 record under Boydston through the 1971 season. He mentored many of the great Southern Illinois coaches such as Dick LeFevre (men’s tennis), Jack Hartman (men’s basketball), Richard ‘Itchy” Jones (baseball) and Lew Hartzog (men’s track). Hartzog is already a member of the MVC Hall of Fame.
Boydston spearheaded the two-year project of building the SIU Arena, which was completed in the spring of 1964.
During his 15-year stay at SIU, he would see four NCAA university division gymnastics titles and seven NCAA men’s basketball tournament appearances (1959 and ‘62-66). Saluki men’s basketball also appeared in the 1967 and 1969 National Invitation Tournaments, winning the 1967 event with Walt Frazier leading the way.
Men’s swimming would have NCAA top 25 finishes from 1960 to 1972, while men’s tennis had seven top 20 NCAA showings from 1963 to 1972, including two national college division championships in 1963 and 1964. The golf teams also won or shared NCAA college division crowns, while baseball, track, wrestling and cross country teams all placed in the top ten of NCAA university division championship competition during Boydston’s tenure.
A graduate of Oklahoma State, Boydston was a standout high jumper for the Aggies, and his personal best high jump mark of 6-9 1/8 stood as the OSU school record from 1940 to 1964. After earning his master’s degree at OSU in 1946, Boydston moved to Columbia University where he served as an instructor while earning his doctorate. In 1949, he moved to the University of Mississippi as an associate professor and remained there until 1955 when he came to SIU as chairman of the department of health education. Boydston, who was also president of the U.S. Gymnastics Federation in the early 1960s, died in March 2005 at the age of 84.