BRENTWOOD (AP) — Rick Byrd, Belmont's former men's basketball coach, heads up the Ohio Valley Conference's newest members of the league's Hall of Fame.
Tom Akers, former track and field director at Eastern Illinois, and Rob Schabert, former Tennessee Tech sports information director, are the other inductees, the league said.
Byrd won 805 career games, 12th-most in NCAA Division I history. He coached Belmont for 33 of his 38 seasons and guided the Bruins from NAIA to Division I, the last seven in the OVC.
Eastern Illinois won 45 combined indoor and outdoor men's and women's championships in 23 years under Akers, who retired after the 2018 season.
Schabert was at Tennessee Tech for 34 years and becomes only the second full-time former sports information director in the Hall of Fame.
The league's spring meetings were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. These inductees will be honored over the next year and invited to the 2021 Honors Brunch.