White Hall’s Yvonne Neal
White Hall’s Yvonne Neal was inducted into the Henderson State University Hall of Honor on Saturday October 6, 2012. This year’s event will took place at the Garrison Center Day Gym on the Henderson campus with festivities beginning at 11 a.m. Saturday.
The 16th Hall of Honor class includes some of the most prolific athletes and professionals to compete at Henderson State. ~~~
Category I (football and basketball) inductees include Malzahn, and football player Joe Carroll. Category II (other sports) inductees include track athlete Raymond Cheatham, and former rifle team member Boyd Goldsby. From Category III which includes all women’s sports at HSU, the inductees are basketball standout Yvonne Neal and volleyball and tennis player Lou Ann Chandler-Howell. Selected from the Heritage Category was three-sport athlete Harold Tilley.
Yvonne Neal was a four-year letter winner from 1982 to 1986 playing for Coach Jane Sevier.
A three-time All-AIC selection, she earned first team honors in 1985 as well as All NAIA, after averaging 14.1 points per game. As a senior, she finished sixth in the conference in free throw percentage, shooting 78.6 percent (44 of 56 attempts).
After graduating from Henderson with a BSE, she became the graduate assistant for the Lady Reddies’ basketball team and earned her master’s degree from Henderson in 1988.
Neal earned the Most Valuable Physical Education Major award. She attended a women’s professional basketball league tryout at Oral Roberts University and signed a professional contract, but due to the league’s financial difficulties she did not compete.
Neal coached for more than two decades, coaching five years as a head women’s basketball coach at a junior college in Texas and 19 years on the high school level. She returned to her High School Alma Mater (White Hall) in 2008, to start a volleyball program. The past two years, Neal has taught and coached at Hot Springs High School where she serves as head girls track coach and assistant girls basketball coach.