The fourth class of the Seymour High School Athletic Hall of Fame will be inducted Dec. 16 during the boys basketball game against Jennings County.

Those to be inducted are Dave Boggs, the school’s swim coach for the past 39 years; Bob Bowman, who coached the 1988 baseball team to the state championship; Andy Denny, a standout basketball player who is a member of the 1,000-point club; Bud Shippee, the former radio voice of the Seymour Owls for 44 years; and Arv Koontz, former sports editor of the Seymour Tribune who has covered the Owls for 51 years.

Dave Boggs

Boggs has been the head coach of the SHS boys and girls swimming and diving teams for the past 39 seasons. That makes him the longest tenured head coach in school history.

His teams have had incredible success, including 36 winning seasons. His girls teams have produced 29 consecutive winning seasons, and his boys teams have enjoyed 30 straight winning seasons. During his career at Seymour, the Owls have recorded 712 wins, or 70.7% of 1,006 dual meets.

His teams have won seven conference championships and finished runner-up in the sectional 25 times. He has coached two individual state champions: Patrick Calhoun, who won the 100-yard breaststroke in 1999, and Kameron Chastain, who won the 100 breaststroke in 2010.

He also has coached two state runners-up. Calhoun went on to qualify for the U.S. Olympic swim team in 2000, and Boggs traveled with him as his coach to the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

Boggs’ name is on the Indiana Swimming & Diving Wall of Fame at the Indiana University Natatorium in Indianapolis — an honor he received for coaching an Indiana Olympian. He also coached U.S. Olympic Trials qualifiers at five consecutive trials from 2000 to 2020.

He coached 13 National High School All-Americans, was a member of the U.S. Swimming National Team from 2000 to 2002 and was inducted into the Muncie/Delaware County Hall of Fame in 2007. He also was instrumental in developing a youth swimming program in Seymour that gives young boys and girls the opportunity to swim year-round.

Boggs retired as a teacher at SHS at the end of the 2022-23 school year but will continue to coach the Owls swimming teams.

Bob Bowman

Bowman is a 1967 graduate of SHS and was the head coach of the Owls baseball team for 31 years. His 1988 team won the state championship, the first team state title in Seymour school history.

During his coaching career, Bowman’s teams won 463 games, topped by a school-best record of 35-2 in winning that state title.

In all, under Bowman’s leadership, the Owls won four South Central Conference championships, five sectional titles, three regional championships, one semistate title and one state championship. He has had multiple players earn all-conference and all-state honors and coached two players who went on to play professional baseball.

Prior to taking over as the head coach of the Seymour program, Bowman served as the freshman coach for six years and the junior varsity coach for two years.

He was named the Indiana High School Baseball Coach of the Year in 1988 and was selected as coach of the South All-Star team that same year.

He received the Ball State University Alumni Coach of the Year award in 2009. He also coached the Seymour American Legion baseball team for more than 30 years and won several sectional championships. For his work with the Legion teams, Bowman was presented the prestigious Arlie Skelton Award.

He also was instrumental in helping build the Seymour youth baseball program. He was on the Seymour Youth League board of directors for more than 35 years and served as president and treasurer of the league.

As a student at SHS, Bowman played baseball for the Owls. During his senior season, he helped the team to a 19-9 record, a South Central Conference title and a sectional championship before the Owls lost in the regional title game.

He retired as a teacher at Seymour Community Schools after serving 40 years as an educator.

Andy Denny

Denny is a 1968 graduate of SHS and was an outstanding basketball and baseball player for the Owls.

In basketball, he was a three-year starter for coach Lloyd E. “Barney” Scott and graduated as the all-time leading scorer in school history. He is still the third leading scorer in Seymour history with 1,347 points.

He is No. 1 in points per game for a career with an average of 19.2, third in career field goals made with 525 and fourth in rebounding with 893. He averaged 23.6 points per game his junior season, which is the third highest average in school history. His 567 points that season is the fourth best and his 335 rebounds the seventh best all-time at Seymour. His 40-point games against Mitchell and Scottsburg are the fourth highest single-game totals in school history.

Denny led the Owls to a sectional championship in 1967 and was voted the team’s most valuable player three consecutive seasons. According to coach Scott, he is the only Seymour player to earn first team all-conference honors three times. Denny was named to the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame Silver Anniversary Team in 1993.

In baseball, Denny was a two-time varsity letter winner and helped the Owls to South Central Conference championships in 1966 and 1967. In his sophomore season, he batted .348 as Seymour finished with an 11-7 record. In his junior year, he was the Owls’ leading hitter with a .344 average and helped Seymour to a 19-9 record with a sectional championship.

Denny earned an athletic scholarship to play basketball at the University of South Alabama. He is still the 10th leading scorer in school history with 1,352 points, and his career average of 18 points a game is the fourth best in South Alabama history. For his career, Denny shot 85.3% from the free throw line, which is the third best in school history. As a senior, he shot 91.4% from the line, which was the second best in the nation.

He also was the first South Alabama player to be drafted by the NBA when Buffalo selected him in the 1972 draft.

Denny was inducted into the South Alabama Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989, received the school’s Distinguished Alumni and Service Award in 2015 and was honored by the College of Education as a Top 50 Alumni graduate in 2017.

After graduating from college, he was an assistant basketball coach at Samford University from 1973 to 1975 before going into private business.

Bud Shippee

Shippee is a 1970 graduate of SHS and served as the radio play-by-play voice of Seymour sports for 44 seasons. He was the sports director at radio stations WJCD, WZZB and WXKU from 1976 until his retirement in 2020.

During his time as the “Voice of the Owls,” he broadcasted more than 2,700 Seymour sporting events, including football, boys and girls basketball and baseball. That included some of the most exciting moments in Seymour sports history, such as the school’s first team state championship in baseball in 1988, the girls basketball team’s Final Four state tournament game at Market Square Arena in 1987 and the football team’s state championship game at the Hoosier Dome in 1991.

During his career, Shippee worked with 22 different head coaches at Seymour. Eleven of those coaches are in various halls of fame, including eight in the Seymour High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

One of the highlights of his career was broadcasting the play-by-play of the IU-Montana State men’s basketball game from Assembly Hall in Bloomington on the Montana State Radio Network when Seymour graduate Brian Fish was coaching the Bobcats in 2018.

He has received numerous honors for his broadcasting of high school sports. That included the Virgil Sweet Service Award from the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association in 1999 for his help in promoting high school basketball across the state.

In 2003, he received the State News Media Award from the Indiana Football Coaches Association for his service in promoting high school football. In 2014, Shippee was presented the Owl Service Award from Seymour High School for his dedication, support and promotion of student-athletes.

In 2018, he received the Indiana Fever Silver Medal Award and was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2020, he was presented the Seymour High School Career Appreciation Award for his work as the “Voice of the Owls” for 44 years.

In 2023, Shippee was inducted into the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame.

Since his retirement in 2020, he has served as the public address announcer for the SHS volleyball and softball teams.

Arv Koontz

Koontz came to The Tribune in March 1972 after working in DeKalb, Illinois, for 11 years. He worked at The Tribune until 2001 when he went to The Jackson County Banner. He then returned to The Tribune in 2007. He retired in 2009 and now works part time at The Tribune.

In 1977, he received the Indiana High School Swimming Coaches Association publicity award. In 1985, he was inducted into the Seymour Bowling Association Hall of Fame as a contributor and also received a publicity award from the Seymour Women’s Bowling Association.

He served as president of the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association in 1989 and received the association’s Corky Lamm Sportswriter of the Year award in 1999. He was inducted into the association’s hall of fame in 2017.

In 1989-90, he received the IHSAA Distinguished Service Media award, and in 1996, he received the Indiana Football Coaches Association publicity award.

In 2000, he was presented the Indiana Interscholastic Athletic Directors Distinguished Service Award for District 5, and in 2012, he received the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association’s Virgil Sweet Service Award for District 3.

He estimates he has covered more than 1,700 high school games in 85 gyms in Indiana and wrote about all five Seymour girls who were named Indiana All-Stars. He covered all 10 Seymour and all 31 Jackson County girls who scored 1,000 or more points during their high school careers and eight of the 16 Seymour and 32 of the 45 Jackson County boys who topped the 1,000-point mark.

He has worked with eight Seymour High School coaches who were inducted into the basketball, football, golf, swimming and wrestling halls of fame.