July 25, 2005

Football's Nick Hebert and Artie Shankle, long time coach Hubert Boales, golf's Bud Bono and Pat O'Callaghan from track have been selected for induction into the McNeese State Hall of Fame.

The induction ceremony will take place at halftime of the Northwest Oklahoma State game on Sept. 24 in Cowboy Stadium. A reception in honor of the inductees will be held prior to the game in the Cowboy Room.

The addition of these five will bring to 100 the number of members in the Hall of Fame that originated in 1980.

Hebert and Shankle were both all-conference performers for the Cowboys on the gridiron, Hebert as an offensive lineman and Shankle as a hard running tailback. Boales is the only person in McNeese history to serve as head coach in three sports - football, baseball and golf - while Bono was one of the first scholarship golfers at McNeese and O'Callaghan was a record setting distance runner.

As an offensive tackle, Hebert, who is a native of Oberlin, was one of the leaders on the Cowboy football team from 1966 to 1969. Three times he earned first team all-conference honors from the Gulf States Conference, becoming one of the few Cowboys to ever receive that accolade three years in a row.

In 1967 he also served the team as place kicker and booted three field goals during the season, one of them a 45 yarder. That year he also helped the Cowboys win the conference championship.

Hebert also excelled in the classroom as he was a founding member and two term president of the McNeese chapter of Delta Sigma Phi, a national business fraternity, and was named to Who's Who.

After graduation he entered into the insurance business, building his own company in Baton Rouge, and he just retired as regional vice president for Monumental Insurance Agency.

Shankle was a top running back for the Cowboys from 1976 to 1979, leading the team in rushing three of those seasons. He now ranks as the ninth leading all-time McNeese rusher with 2,143 yards on 483 carries, an average of 4.5 yards per rush.

He played in two Independence Bowl games and during his career the Cowboys compiled a 33-12-1 record. Shankle was the team's most valuable player in 1979 when he ran for 938 yards and eight touchdowns as the Cowboys went undefeated in the regular season.

In 1978 he was the team's leading rusher with 727 yards and he ran for 479 yards in 1977. In the 1979 Independence Bowl game against Syracuse he was the Cowboys' leading rusher with 85 yards on 16 carries.

Among his top individual performances were a 139 yard rushing game against Tenn-Chattanooga in 1979 and a 139 yard effort against Nicholls State in 1978 when he also scored five tds to tie what was then a Cowboy record.

The former Cowboy standout who continues to live in Silsbee, TX., was twice named McNeese's outstanding offensive player, was named to the all-Louisiana team, was three times named to the all-Southland Conference team and played one year of pro football with San Diego.

Boales served as a McNeese coach, either as an assistant or head coach, from 1966 to 1993, and he was regarded as one of the top recruiters in Cowboy history.

The native Texan had joined the Cowboys as a member of Jim Clark's football staff in 1966 and he also assumed the head coaching duties in baseball in 1968. He served two stints as head coach of the golf team, 1978 to 1981 and 1989 to 1993. And, he was also head coach in football in 1992.

As a Cowboy assistant football coach he recruited some of the top talent to ever play for the Pokes, including this year's Hall of Fame inductee Shankle. Among the other players Boales brought to McNeese were all-Americans and Hall of Famers Larry Grissom and Charlie Powell, all-Americans Larry Rawlinson and Glen Koch and numerous players who earned all-conference honors.

During the 25 seasons he served on the football staff, the Cowboys won five conference titles and played in four bowl games.

In Boales' 10 seasons as head baseball coach, his teams finished in the upper division of the Southland Conference and Gulf States Conference standings seven times and compiled a 190-197-4 won-lost record, the victories the second most for a coach in McNeese history.

Among the players he coached were all-conference selections Gerald Andrus, Coco Rossitto, Tom Crawford, Allan Ladd, Dick Morris, Phillip Smith, Neal Spencer, Nathan Fontenot, Bill Simon, Paul Young, Russell Conner and Keith Guthrie.

His golf teams, which featured Hall of Famer Tim Graham among other standouts, won two conference championships, finished second once and he was named the league's coach of the year twice.

Bono was a two-time most valuable golfer for the Cowboys in the 1950s, leading the Cowboys during collegiate golf's infancy. He was a three year letterman and played on McNeese's first two Gulf States Conference championship teams.

As one of Ellis Guillory's top players, Bono led the Cowboys in the GSC tournament in 1957 with a fourth place finish, shooting rounds of 74-80-79 for a 233, and in 1958 with a runnerup finish with rounds of 73-73-70 for a 216.

Bono posted a 73.0 stroke average during the 1958 season.

After graduating from McNeese, he went on to dental school at Loyola in New Orleans and after a stint in the US Navy, ran a practice until he retired in 1994. He has since been involved in the telephone business and remains as one of the top amateur golfers in the Lake Charles area.

O'Callaghan, a native of Ireland who continues to live there, was one of the top distance runners in McNeese State history, leading the Cowboys in that department from 1974 to 1977.

He was a Southland Conference cross country champion in 1975 and 1976 and won a total of six first place titles during the SLC outdoor track and field championships (three in the 5000 meters, two in the steeplechase and one in the 1500 meters) .

O'Callaghan also was named the conference track athlete of the year in 1977 and was the league's scoring champion the same year.

He continues to hold the school record of 3:42.9 in the 1500 meter run which he set in 1977. During his career he was named McNeese's MVP in track a total of three times.