Entry Category: Recreation and Sports - Starting with A

The Arkansas State Fair and Livestock Show (usually just called the Arkansas State Fair) is an annual event sponsored by the Arkansas Livestock Show Association and held in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The fair features a midway/carnival, music concerts, a rodeo, commercial exhibits and displays, free shows (from exotic animals to acrobats and magicians), arts and crafts competitions and exhibits, food competitions and demonstrations, and various livestock competitions. It runs for ten days, usually in October, starting on a Friday and running through two weekends, ending on a Sunday night. The current Arkansas State Fair began in 1938, but there had been several other efforts over the years to establish a state fair. On November 6, 1867, the Arkansas State …

The Arkansas Swimming Hall of Fame is a body that recognizes swimming excellence in the state. The induction of its first class in 1986 served as an announcement of the state swimming community’s determination to raise the profile of swimming in Arkansas beyond its emergence every four years as part of the summer Olympics. The Arkansas Swimming Hall of Fame is a nonprofit organization that seeks to recognize and honor those who have contributed to swimming in Arkansas and to promote amateur swimming throughout the state. Its club efforts both teach swimming and offer the first opportunities for competition to the college teams that compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)–sanctioned championships to the high-level club teams that serve …

In observance of the centennial anniversary of the creation of the Arkansas Territory, Governor Charles Hillman Brough endorsed a statewide commemoration planning effort in June 1919. The commemoration plans involved all seventy-five Arkansas counties, an extensive network of committees, hundreds of planners and fundraisers, and elaborate plans for the main centennial observance, scheduled to be held in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in November 1919. The observance failed to materialize, however, against a backdrop of concerns over a Spanish influenza recurrence and fundraising shortfalls. The idea for a Territorial Centennial originated with Harvey C. Couch, president of Arkansas Power and Light Company (AP&L), who suggested a statewide celebration held in conjunction with the centennial of the Arkansas Gazette. In March 1919, …

The Arkansas Track and Field Hall of Fame (ATFHF), which began honoring athletes in 1995, is dedicated to recognizing Arkansans whose performances and contributions have distinguished them in the world of track and field. Its stated mission is to “honor and recognize persons who have made significant contributions to the sports of track and field and cross country in the state of Arkansas; and recognize and encourage Arkansas high school track athletes who have excelled in performance and /or academics.” While the first class was inducted in 1995, the idea of establishing such a hall had been in the works for some time. Led by Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) track and field coach Bob Gravett, who is generally recognized as …

For parts of three centuries, the Arkansas Travelers baseball team has used only one nickname, played on only three home fields, and become owned by its fans, something unusual in professional sports—in 1960, shares were sold to fans to ensure that the team would not leave Little Rock (Pulaski County). In 1957, to draw fans from the entire state, management changed the name from the Little Rock Travelers to the Arkansas Travelers, making it the first professional team to be named after a state. In addition, five future National Baseball Hall of Famers played for the Travelers: Tris Speaker, Travis Jackson, Bill Dickey, Jim Bunning, and Ferguson Jenkins. The minor league team had many failures in the Southern Association and …

The Arkansas Unit of The Herb Society of America (AU-HSA), founded in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1966, has approximately forty members spread from the Little Rock area throughout the state. Its logo incorporates a cotton boll, symbolizing the regional historic importance of this herbal plant. AU-HSA is dedicated to promoting the knowledge, use, and delight of herbs through educational programs, research, and sharing the experience of its members with the community, and it lives up to this mission partly through its three gardens. The Territorial Medicinal Garden at the Historic Arkansas Museum features plants used in Arkansas’s territorial days, such as boneset, ground ivy, garlic, native senna, pokeweed, and selfheal, as researched by Mary Worthen. The Garden of Exploration …

The Arkansas State League/Arkansas-Missouri League was a professional baseball, Class D minor league that operated from 1934 until 1940. The league was one of only three Depression-era leagues to exist in the state, the others being the Northeast Arkansas League and the Cotton States League. The Arkansas State League began on May 8, 1934. It paralleled a rapid growth in professional baseball minor leagues around the country and was a by-product of the farm system created by St. Louis Cardinals vice president, Branch Rickey, wherein the Cardinals organization sponsored and managed teams and players in order to develop players for the St. Louis major league team. The league began play with teams in Fayetteville (Washington County), Siloam Springs (Benton County), …

ATA Martial Arts, previously known as the American Taekwondo Association, was founded in 1969 by Haeng Ung Lee and is headquartered in Little Rock (Pulaski County). ATA has over 300,000 members worldwide, making it the largest organization in North America dedicated to the discipline of taekwondo. The organization maintains that its instructors and students live by its founder’s philosophy: “Today not possible, tomorrow possible.” After teaching taekwondo for several years at the U.S. Air Force base at Osan in South Korea, Haeng Ung Lee immigrated to the United States in 1962 at the invitation of Richard Reed, an American military officer and one of Lee’s top students. Frustrated by the inconsistent quality of taekwondo instruction in the United States, Lee …

Hubert “Geese” Ausbie joined the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team in 1961 following a standout college career at Philander Smith College in Little Rock (Pulaski County). For the next twenty-four years, Ausbie played for the Globetrotters in more than 100 countries and became known as the “Clown Prince of Basketball” for his entertaining antics on the basketball court. Geese Ausbie was born in Crescent, Oklahoma, on April 25, 1938. He was one of eight children and the youngest son of Bishop and Nancy Ausbie. As a youth, Ausbie excelled in baseball, basketball, tennis, and track. He once scored seventy points in a basketball game for Crescent’s Douglas High School and helped lead Douglas to four straight Oklahoma Basketball State Championships. After …