Former Kentucky first lady, pro ball player among Henry Clay Hall of Fame inductees

Three former athletes will be recognized as part of Henry Clay High School’s seven-member Hall of Fame class, which will formally be inducted during a banquet Sept. 15, at Spindletop Hall.

Robert “Sug” Anderson, Coleman Preston “Pres” Judy Jr. and Ron Pinchback Jr. will be inducted alongside former Kentucky first lady Jane Klinger Beshear, accountant Dewitt Hisle, businessman Glenn S. Ritchey and educator Julia Rudnick-Woodall.

Anderson played on Henry Clay’s 1952 boys’ basketball team, which lost to eventual champion Cuba in the quarterfinals of the state tournament. He was an All-State player as a junior and senior.

Judy was a first-team All-State basketball player and a second-team All-State football player as a senior. He went on to play basketball at Georgia Tech, where he started all four seasons. Judy was drafted but the ABA’s Kentucky Colonels and the NBA’s Cincinnati Royals but decided against playing professional basketball, instead opting to coach the sport. That path eventually led him to a lengthy career with Olympus Corporation of America, a medical endoscopy group.

Pinchback played baseball, basketball and football for the Blue Devils. He twice quarterbacked football teams that were ranked No. 1 in the state and played in two regional tournaments on the baseball field. He went on to play baseball and football at Georgetown College before a successful business career.

Those three were standouts on the athletic fields at Henry Clay, but all four of the other inductees have sports connections as well:

▪  Beshear helped build biking, hiking and riding trails through the Adventure Tourism initiative. She has been a lifelong equine enthusiast and advocate and served on boards governing the Kentucky Horse Park and overseeing the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event and the World Equestrian Games.

▪  Hisle was an Olympic torch bearer in 2002 and participated in the Senior Olympics from 1991-2007, representing Kentucky nine times in three-on-three basketball. He’s also served on the board for Host Communications and was on the original board for the Lexington Center Corporation, which operates Rupp Arena.

▪  Ritchey traveled with the 2001 Olympic committee to Athens, Greece, to bring the Olympic flame to Atlanta, Ga., and was a torch bearer in Daytona Beach, Fla.

▪  Rudnick-Woodall has been involved in several programs since she began teaching at Henry Clay in 1977. She was co-director of the school’s intramural program for 10 years, has been a member of the athletics Wall of Fame committee, helped sponsor cheerleading and has been the boys’ basketball team’s official scorekeeper “for too many years to count,” she wrote in a news release.

This story was originally published September 7, 2017 at 1:08 PM with the headline "Former Kentucky first lady, pro ball player among Henry Clay Hall of Fame inductees."