Ingle leads 2022 KSU Hall of Fame class

The Kennesaw State athletic department on Thursday announced the five newest inductees into the university’s athletic hall of fame.

The class is comprised of Tony Ingle, Nabil Hamid, Rob King, Dr. Audrey Morgan and Susan Whitlock.

“Kennesaw State Athletics is excited to honor the legacy of these individuals that has stood the test of time,” athletic director Milton Overton said in a release. “Their accomplishments and contributions for the success of KSU deserve to be remembered forever in our Hall of Fame. I am excited to celebrate with our Owl family this fall.”

The induction ceremony will take place Oct. 7 inside the KSU Convocation Center, with the class introduced the following day during the Owls’ football game against North Alabama.

Ingle, who died on Jan. 18, 2021, due to complications from COVID-19, coached the Kennesaw State men’s basketball team to the 2004 NCAA Division II national championship. He is the winningest coach in program history with a 178-166 record.

The Owls won the 2004 Peach Belt Conference championship, and Ingle was named the NCAA Division II Coach of the Year following the Owls’ national title run.

Ingle guided the program during its transition to Division I, culminating with Kennesaw State’s upset of Georgia Tech in front of a sold-out crowd at the KSU Convocation Center in 2010.

Hamid is the only Kennesaw State male student-athlete to ever qualify to the NCAA cross country championships, doing so twice in 2011 and ’12. He was also a three-time USTFCCCA All-South Region honoree — an honor no other Kennesaw State athlete has earned this more than once.

The decorated runner was named first-team All-ASUN Conference four times, leading the Owls to ASUN championships in 2009 and ’10.

King was the first coach in Kennesaw State women’s soccer history and led the Owls to the 2003 Division II national championship with a 25-1 record. He posted a record of 168-80-21 in his time at the university from 2002-15. His teams won a pair of Peach Belt regular-season and tournament championships, and Southeast Regional titles in 2002 and ’03.

King led the Owls during their Division I transition, with the team finishing second in the 2005 ASUN Conference regular season, its first Division I campaign. The Owls won the ASUN tournament and went to NCAA Tournament in 2007 and ’09, while winning ASUN regular-season titles in 2006, ’07 and ’09.

Morgan stewarded a $5 million dollar gift from the Bailey Foundation in 2021 — the largest contribution to the College of the Arts in its history, as well as one of the largest donations from a single organization to Kennesaw State. The gift helped establish honors scholarship endowments across three academic colleges and the athletic department, with additional funding supporting an existing scholarship endowment.

Morgan has a long history of giving at Kennesaw State. In 1999, with her late husband, she established the Audrey and Jack Morgan Endowed Scholarship in Music. In 2017, she established the Audrey Morgan Nursing Scholarship to combat nursing shortages across Georgia.

Altogether, Morgan has supported 66 Kennesaw State students through her scholarship endowments, while the Morgan family is the largest combined donors ever at Kennesaw State at more than $16 million since 1993.

Whitlock, the wife of longtime Kennesaw State softball coach and administrator Scott Whitlock, was the university’s first senior woman administrator, a role she held from 1992-2006. She was also the SAAC administrator for 20 years from 1992-2011.

Susan Whitlock was the Owls’ women’s tennis coach from 1993-96, compiling a .719 winning percentage with a 46-18 record. Whitlock also served as a women’s basketball assistant coach from 1987-89.