Rust family, Winans, inducted into SEMO Athletic Hall of Fame

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. -- Former Southeast Missouri State men's basketball player Derek Winans stood on a stage in the middle of the Show Me Center on Friday night, a place he'd been accustomed to for most of his life.

This time it was to be inducted into the Southeast Athletics Hall of Fame along with three other individuals, a team and a family.

"This one is different and probably a little bit more special because it's home," Winans said. "Growing up just a few miles away on the Illinois side, I've been coming to SEMO games my whole life and watching SEMO basketball games. To be able to come and play here, and then to be inducted into the Hall of Fame as well, it's pretty special. It's an incredible honor."

Winans was the OVC Freshman of the Year in 2001-02 and a first-team CoSIDA Academic All-American in 2005. He's fifth in career scoring, third in field goals made and attempted, second in career 3-pointers made and attempted and tied for second in steals.

"It's kind of surreal," Winans said of returning to the Show Me Center. "You come back, and I kind of feel like suiting up again. It's definitely quite an honor to come back here and it doesn't feel like that long ago that I was playing, so it definitely feels like coming home again."

Donald Metz (baseball and basketball 1996-70), Mary Kate Farrington (gymnastics 1994-97), Angel Rubio (football 1993-97), the 2000 volleyball team and the Rust Family (friends of the Redhawks) also were inducted.

"I've been to a bunch of these, and like I said [I thought], I'd give anything in the world if I could someday stand on that stage and say 'thank you' for being inducted into the Hall of Fame," Metz said. "It was a dream come true."

Metz led the basketball team in scoring as a freshman and was a the most valuable player and a captain of the 1970 baseball team.

He was a four-year letter winner on the baseball team, finishing his career with a .330 batting average, and was named to the Topps NCAA Small College Baseball and District 5 All-Star Teams.

Farrington scored four perfect 10s in her career at Southeast, with the first coming in 1995 -- the first in school history. She's also the only gymnast in the program to ever score a perfect 10 in two events and holds the top five vault scores and top three floor exercise scores in Southeast's record book.

"I thought that when I was 9 years old getting to go to the Olympics to watch gymnastics was the coolest thing in the world -- this is so much better than that," Farrington said excitedly during her acceptance remarks. "I mean, so much better."

Rubio holds school records with 21.5 career sacks and 44 career tackles for loss, and finished with 330 tackles during his Southeast career. He was the Ohio Valley Conference Defensive Player of the Year and an American Football Coaches Association and Sports Network All-American in 1997 before being drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the seventh round of the NFL draft in 1998.

The 2000 volleyball team was undefeated in the OVC, won the conference tournament and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament with a defeat of North Carolina for the first time in school history. That team featured the OVC's Player of the Year in Krista Haukap and Rookie of the Year in Emily Scannell.

The Rust family has supported Southeast athletics through donations as well as media coverage with the Southeast Missourian, SEMO ESPN Sports Network and semoball.com. For more than five decades, members of the Rust Family have served on the Redhawks Club booster board.

"It's very important, the recognition for it," said Gary Rust, the chairman of the board of Rust Communications. "One, we're proud of our family, and two we've always been associated with this university. I actually went to the kindergarten, grade school and graduated high school at the old campus high school, so I've been affiliated with this university for many years."

That affiliation is something that Gary Rust's son, Rex Rust, spoke fondly of at the ceremony.

"Probably some of the greatest memories were when dad would take us down to SEMO basketball games when it was in old Houck Field House," said Rex Rust, who is co-president of Rust Communications. "We'd always sit up on the last row of the balcony behind where the sportswriters would sit, and dad would sit there with one of us on his left and one of us on his right and give us play-by-play, minute-by-minute analysis of the game, and pointing out traits and characteristics that he saw in each of the players -- whether they were hustling or there was discipline, teamwork.

"Now that I look back, I didn't appreciate it then, but it really became a classroom for us, and exposed us early on to how important sports are and can be in the development of somebody, and a preview of some of the challenges ahead in life. Having that appreciation, having a father that really exposed us to that, having a wonderful university that supports programs that we were able to go to was wonderful in those early years."