The late Kathryn Little was an instructor in physical education at Bluffton from 1956-59 and again in 1965-73. She illustrates the story of coaching and teaching at Bluffton, moving gracefully from the r
ole of student-coach to full time teacher-coach. Little combined college study with teaching and coaching and with the multiple arts of homemaking and a variety of community activities.
In high school at Leipsic she earned three letters in basketball and was selected to the All County team. Years later she coached the women’s teams in basketball, volleyball and softball in the revival of these intercollegiate sports. She is one of the unsung heroines of that movement coming to national recognition through the efforts of Billy Jean King and others. However, leaf through the pages of old Ista yearbooks and one finds a significant plane given to women’s sports on the Bluffton campus, the activities of the women’s varsity B and the women’s hiking club.
Little reflected the balance which characterized Bluffton’s athletic spirit and tradition. An able student, winning Pi Delta honors as an undergraduate, she reflected thoroughness and quality in the classroom. She organized a broadly-based intramural program for women. She opened up an intercollegiate sports program for women. She worked with cheerleaders in the intricacies of the cheerleading art and served on hundreds of committees which serve behind the scenes of Homecomings, May Days and special campus events.
Little and her family symbolized by their activities and interests that athletics is not just a series of spectator sports where you play hard in high school and college and then sit out the rest of your life on the stands or in front of the TV. Her avid love of tennis and other “lifetime sports” affirms the importance of sports and recreation in the whole man and woman.
Little died in 2005.
With more victories than any coach in Bluffton history, Kim Fischer took her place in the Athletics Hall of Fame just one year after her departure from campus.
She participated in volleyball for four years, earning two letters. She averaged 2.66 kills per game, and her career total of 806 kills ranks 16th all-time at Bluffton.
ict honors in 1991 and 1992. She continues to hold the second-best high-jump height of 5’3″.
The late Lloyd Ramseyer, who first distinguished himself at Bluffton as “Tank,” was a left tackle on Bluffton’s team which went through a whole season undefeated. The great H.W. Berky-coached team of 1921 played one game that year on Armistice Day and trimmed the University of Toledo, 14-0, on a soggy, snowy field. The Ista yearbook records “Ramseyer, at tackle, was the outstanding star of the game but the whole team and Coach Berk
y are to be congratulated.”
ball teams of the early 1970s. In 1972, the four-year letterman helped lead the Beavers to a conference championship and was named first-team all-NAIA District 22. He also lettered one year each in basketball and baseball. A high school coach from 1973-87, he returned to Bluffton as offensive line coach from 1988-2006 and is now the Beavers’ running backs coach and director of academic support. He has been an adjunct instructor at Bluffton as well.
education from Bluffton and, in 1983, a master’s degree in educational administration from the University of Dayton. He and his wife Melanie live in Ottawa, where he also taught at Ottawa-Glandorf High School from 1979-2005 and was athletic director for three years.
He was an All-Mid-Ohio Conference offensive guard on a 7-2 Bluffton football team in 1965. He was also a guard on the basketball court, and that’s where he really stood out.
selection in both sports. He is already in the Bluffton Hall of Fame as part of the previously inducted 1965-66 basketball and 1967 baseball teams. Eighth on the career basketball scoring list with 1,414 points, he averaged 17.2 points per game and scored at least 20 points in 39 of his 82 games. He is still first in career free
throws made, with 424, and second in attempts (550). As a junior in 1966-67, Froning was named second-team NAIA District 22 as well as first-team all-MOC.
. For his career, Goings had 3,338 yards in 580 attempts, plus 47 touchdowns and two conversions for 284 points.
k relay team with Dwight Salzman, donor of the Athletics Hall of Fame. In his freshman and sophomore years, he was the top point-scorer in his events—the 100- and 220-yard dashes, plus the discus and broad jump.
on, I acquired the ability to meet people and made a large circle of friends,” Augsburger said. “As a result, I kept in touch with the general athletic program as well as with the entire program.”