Ken Stephens, former UCA athlete and football coach,  was inducted into the Arkansas Hall of Fame  on Feb. 28 during a banquet at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.

Stephens holds the current university record of five interceptions in one football game and led the Bears to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) national championship game in 1976.

Stephens, current Office of Student Success assistant supervisor, was one of 11 inductees honored that night.

“I enjoyed the banquet tremendously and of course meeting the new inductees,” Stephens said. “We had a little get-together Thursday night and it was very enjoyable.”

Stephens said he was surprised to hear he was being inducted.

“I figured if I was going to get it, I would’ve gotten it a long time ago and since I didn’t, I sort of forgot about it.”

Stephens said the Hall of Fame has a senior committee and since he is a senior himself, that committee probably had more to do with his nomination than anything else.

According to Stephens’ biography written by UCA archive director Jimmy Bryant, Stephens had eight winning seasons and guided the Bears a team that had not had a winning season since 1968 to American International Conference (AIC) titles in 1976, 1978, 1980 and 1981 during his 10-year tenure.

Stephens said that while it’s hard to pick a favorite, he’s tied between holding the 1976 championship game and the four AIC titles as his favorite memory from coaching at UCA.

Bryant also wrote that in recognition of his high school coaching success, Stephens won the Lowell Manning Award and was named on two occasions as an Arkansas High School Coaches Association All-Star coach.

Stephens’ greatest success in high school football was when he lead the North Little Rock Wildcats to three state championships in 1965, 1966 and 1970, then leaving to become the assistant coach at the University of Arkansas –  Fayetteville for one year.

Stephens returned to UCA in 1972 to become the football team’s head coach. He was inducted into the UCA Sports Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Arkansas Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2007 for being named the national runner-up in the 120-yard high hurdles in 1951 and 1952.

Stephens was the first AIC athlete in any sport to be named All-American two years in a row.

“[Sports] is my passion,” he said. “It always was. I came to college thinking I wanted to do some kind of medical stuff, but after I was there a year I knew I needed to change my major. I switched to physical education and knew I was going to be a coach. Physics and chemistry changed my mind a little bit. I knew I wasn’t going to do very well in those two courses. It was a good change for me.”

Stephens currently works in the student success office, overseeing the tutoring of UCA athletes and nonathletic students.