Former resident trying for hall of fame

A former Tucumcari resident is trying to help her alma mater get inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame next year.

Glenda Miller, who lived in Tucumcari with her husband, Bob Miller, when he pastored the First Baptist Church from 1980 to 1998, played guard for the Wayland Baptist University women's basketball team after graduating from the Texas institution in 1965.

The Flying Queens hold the record for the most wins by a women's collegiate team. During the past 70 years, the Queens sport a winning percentage of .743.

From 1953 to 1958, the Flying Queens won 131 consecutive games — a record for either a women's or men's basketball teams. Wayland began providing 13 full scholarships for women's basketball players during the early 1950s, becoming the first four-year college to do so, decades before Title IX was enacted.

“The Queens and their coaches, over the decades, have strongly influenced women's collegiate basketball,” Wayland President Bobby Hall said.

After three previous attempts to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, former Flying Queens players, including Miller, have been lobbying newspapers across the country, using social media and even hiring a public-relations firm to state their case for enshrinement.

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame will announce nominations later this month, finalists in February, and the Class of 2019 inductees in March. Induction will take place in September.